Bonkai to Fanfic Tropes: thickening the air i'm breathing
by donutworry
Summary: he can't see her anymore except in his dreams. neverland is home, but she is a sanctuary. crossposted to AO3. tropes: ghost au, soulmate au, seeing the future, lapslock
1. arc i: the ether

_my hands are searching for you_

 _my arms are outstretched towards you_

 _i feel you on my fingertips_

 _my tongue dances behind my lips for you_

 _this fire rising through my being_

 _burning i'm not used to seeing you_

* * *

'we must be,' kai whispers to his sister, tapping at the cafe-au-lait moon-shaped marking on the inside of her left wrist. the birthmark mirrors his own.

they're drawing, side by side, matching dark heads bowed over construction paper and crayons. jo's blue eyes flick to his own, contemplative and deep for such a young face, but then she is nodding her agreement.

'soulmates,' she whispers back, and it makes sense. she loves kai and kai loves her and they're best friends and it's them against the world, always. they swap papers and both are amused that they each drew their own rendition of a butterfly.

from that point, kai is strong in the knowledge, brimming with conviction, that josette is his soulmate. he had the thought and she agreed and they're magic - witches always have strong connections to their soulmates and he and jo share a mind. there is no stronger connection.

it's not so rare or so weird as people think whenever he mentions it - some cultures believe that twins carry the souls of lovers who committed suicide together and so became bound to one another. once he learns this, that's it for him. jo is the one and kai no longer has to worry about how much of a freak of nature he is or how alone he feels when he's not attached at the hip to his soul-bonded sister. he can ignore the way people shift away from him when he's around, when he says something that makes them giggle nervously. he can ignore how dull and boring he feels when he has to say he's only joking and he constantly plays a game of pretend with people who don't even know the rules.

their dad, the almighty coven leader, hates it of course, tells kai to shut up whenever he mentions it, keeps a close eye on the twins as they grow older when jo still doesn't refute the claim or put distance between herself and her older brother; it's a useless endeavor. they are _soulmates_ , not because fate destined them to be, but because they chose to be.

besides, jo is jo and kai is kai and they're twins, soulmates, past-life lovers now made family. whatever they want to be. but kai no more wants to tap a beat against jo's ass with his balls anymore than he wants to set himself on fire. sex is for stupid, easy girls who giggle too much and want to play with him, even when he plays too rough and they cry about it. his soul is for the sister he gave it to, and that's how he likes it. he cares for nothing and no one except for jo. when they merge, they'll be one whole being, the way they were meant to be.

life is simple, easy. they practice magic, prepare themselves for the merge, neither afraid because no matter what, they'll always have each other.

it's two events that fuck it all up.

first, they turn sixteen and things change when a new brand blooms on jo's arm like a rash. he can't help but feel betrayed. he rubs at the soft brown crescent moon on his wrist, glaring into jo's apologetic face and ignoring her pleas.

'people can have more than one, kai,' she finally snaps, exasperated with his dramatics. 'and our marks are just birthmarks, not the real thing.'

the taller teen's scowl only deepens and jo's face is immediately apologetic. he knows that, he does. the siblings were never more than that, no matter how people whispered or glared or kai teased them. but that wasn't even kai's issue. his problem was that she had someone else. and he, he only -

'i only have you, jo.' his voice is soft, confessional. she instantly knows, thinks the echos of his thoughts because she knows his mind like her own. 'i'm weird, jo, and you're going to meet mr. or mrs. quill pen soon, and then i'll be alone.'

the young woman frowns down at the watercolor feather on her right forearm, opposing the side where the the soft moon birthmark rests just below the meaty part of her palm. it is a quill pen, she marvels, then looks back up to her gloomy brother. she wraps him up in her arms.

'you have me,' she mutters, moving his hand out of the way to press their left wrists together. the contact burns, but it's jo's magic being given, siphoned into him: nothing cosmic about it. but it feels safe and familiar to kai and he welcomes it. 'always,' his sister whispers. kai hugs her back silently and ignores the echo of doubt he feels in her head.

* * *

life stays simple, much to kai's relief, after jo meets alaric, who is a scrawny history nerd new to portland. his soul brand appeared the moment he came into town, he tells them. kai would hate alaric on principle, except the slightly older boy defers to him with something akin to hero worship. he treats his soulmate's twin with respect and kai can respond with nothing more venomous than apathy in the face of such reverence.

(this doesn't stop kai from pushing him into the pool when he finds out the other boy can't swim. it also doesn't stop him from laughing loudly and uncontrollably as alaric splashes about desperately, swallowing water and screaming for help until joey appears. kai is staggering slowly to the edge of the pool, trying to gather his wits so he can save jo's poor, helpless soulmate, but his younger brother saves him the trouble. 'i was only joking,' kai responds to their angry glares. 'i was coming for him.')

the twins practice their magic. jo grows stronger and stronger still. kai learns the different ways to control his siphoning ability. she becomes more dedicated to her magic in a way she wasn't before, spending hours talking with their father, who is growing harsher on both of them the closer they draw to twenty-two. kai knows she wants to win, for her new soulmate. it embitters him, but he can deny his twin nothing, even when she spends less and less time with him.

event number two happens in the form of another set of twins being born when they're eighteen. the spares to the heirs. their parents name the youngest in the brood of now seven kids lucas and olivia. kai's gut flairs. for all that he lacks his own magic, he's still a witch - his abilities as an empath are stronger than what his father wants to believe.

the air tastes nasty and kai sees goat skulls on the screen of his lids every time he dreams. the distance grows between he and his twin in tandem with the competition between them. everyone dotes on the babies, even him, but he feels so outside of it all. he misses the days when it was just him and jo against the world, when his chosen soulmate didn't constantly block him from her mind or give him the cold shoulder. in the future, when he looks back, he thinks that maybe he should have known. his sister has always been sneaky.

jo is such a fucking liar.

* * *

he snaps like an overly taut string when it all comes together and he never knew he could be so capable of violence. it surprises him since kai has no clue where the idea even came from - typically, he's the laid-back, fun brother, despite the bitter loneliness his coven leader imposes on him. he doesn't care who it is that gets in the way of his mission to kill lucas and olivia; he throws two of his siblings over the stair railing after dressing them with bloody faces and ropes around their necks. he feels nothing more than a sick burst of pleasure when he hears their necks snap. in his search for the golden brats, he follows a trail of jo's blood around the house, ignores the blind panic flashing in the back of his skull like a railroad crossing light. when joey tries to stop him, kai drowns his younger brother in the backyard pool. the struggle stops and kai is left staring at his brother's floating body. he remembers the incident with alaric. he remembers racing laps around this very pool with joey in the summers and he thinks that his brother was always such a good swimmer and he starts to laugh.

kai laughs and laughs and keeps laughing until his breath is caught and he feels like he's choking. tears wet his eyes; he can't tell if this is his pain or the lingerings of joey's final moments. he doesn't care. is the tight feeling in his chest the phantom sensation of his knife in his twin's spleen or her betrayal reverberating in his heart? he doesn't care. the chaos of his massacre washes over him like a tsunami. images of dead goats and ram bones flash through his mind. he feels sick to his stomach.

what a fucking bitch. what kind of sick person turns their back on their soulmate like that? the soulmate who came kicking and screaming into the harsh world with you, by your side from the moment existence took root, promising to stay there until the end of it all- _what kind of twisted cunt abandoned that soulmate?_ she chose him. _he chose her._ he wouldn't let her just ditch him like this.

when he finds her, she's curled up in the fetal position, whimpering, dark bangs plastered to her forehead by sweat. he's not really there in the room when he questions her; he's completely checked out. he feels her fear when he kicks her stab wound. when he screams 'where are they?!' in her face and she lets out a cry. his left wrist burns - her magic festering under his skin. open wounded trust. the grip he has on the baseball bat in his hands (and when did he get that?) feels slippery.

two, tiny blond-headed figures run from the room and kai turns to them in aggravation. he ignores the way jo clutches at his pants when he makes to follow after the witchlings. he ignores her calling his name, ignores the way his wrist smarts angrily, ignores the wrong, wrong, wrong feeling he gets from leaving her hurt and broken. he leaves himself behind with her.

outside, he gets greeted by his father. the man stands there, stern and unnerving as ever, and kai feels four again, wants to rush to his daddy for comfort. _make it better. this hurts, i hate this._

but he's not the four-year-old boy plastered to his dad's leg. lucas stares up at him with big, frightened eyes from his place behind the parker patriarch. olivia grips her twin's hand, her face buried in the other toddler's shoulder.

his father starts chanting then, and other voices rise up and join. the bat in kai's hand falls to the ground and he stares at his father, glassy eyes trapped in the angry gaze. a bloody hand grips his wrist and a familiar voice - his voice, because isn't she him, aren't they one and the same, didn't they pick that for themselves? - rings in his ear. the crescent beneath the bloody grip pulses and he turns away from his father's guttural reiterations to catch jo's eye.

he doesn't know what he sees there. anger or guilt or sadness or relief. he doesn't know her. his chosen, his other half, his best friend, his twin sister who was supposed to conquer the world with him...she was a stranger. he feels disconnected and then the magic between their bodies is gone. his wrist suddenly burns and then jo's gone. so is his dad and the rest of the coven.

kai is alone, but that's nothing new.

* * *

wherever he is now is dark and desolate and so _lonely_. it was like being dropped in closed inkpot, an abyss of blackness that he just floated in. no direction. no sensation. kai's not used to such quiet around him or such isolation in his own head; even when his family was determined to bar him, he could still feel their presences like a warm infection, because his natural ability overrode their defenses. there's nothing now but his own desperation and hatred. no trace of anyone at all, not in his mind or the wrist that now mocks him with its nudity.

jo had taken her magic back, and the connection she'd forged to him with it. kai was truly alone.

slowly, they start to appear, like ghosts - shadowy figures that weave in and out of the background. at first, kai thinks he's finally died, the shadowy world he's been trapped alone in finally sucking the life from him. the forms become more corporeal and the utter darkness that surrounded him for god knows how long dissipates and he is reinstated into the real world once more.

his relief is a heavy, palpable thing when his childhood home comes into view. too excited, he doesn't notice how muted and soft everything seems. unreal. rushing inside, he looks around - he can't find his father anywhere, so he heads towards the room across the hall from his own. the door is open and he makes his way forward, surprised to find stacks and stacks of boxes just piled up on the floor.

so enraptured in the barren, storage room look of jo's room, he fails to notice when she walks right past him into her closet. she's on the phone. her voice echos from the closet

'are you sure it'll be okay for me to stay with you for a little while, ms. sheila?'

whoever ms. sheila is, whatever she says brings palpable relief to jo's voice. 'thank you,' his twin breathes. 'i don't have magic anymore and alaric and i can't stay here. not with everything that's happened.'

she comes back out with a suitcase and a stack of clothes in her arms, the cordless phone pressed between her cheek and shoulder. he growls her name, but she ignores him. puzzled, kai eyes his twin warily. even with his own weird reactions to things, he thinks that in the face of someone who killed your younger siblings and holds a grudge against you, one would be less casual.

what the fuck?

he moves to stand directly across from her as she dumps her shit on the bed. she still doesn't acknowledge him. he snaps out her name angrily. nothing.

when she stretches her left arm towards him to snag a bra, he grasps her wrist as tightly as he can. his hand phases right through her. a shiver passes through both of them. she snatches her arm back and cradles it to her chest; an errant thumb runs over the now blank space on her wrist as she looks around the room and kai looks at her in horror. what did they do to him?

'kai?' she whispers.

'jo?' he breathes back. _what did you do?_ he doesn't ask. he can't bear to say it out loud. heartbreak is something he could never understand, but he thinks that's what the ache in his chest is when he realizes just what his coven - his _family_ , his _sister_ \- did. he finally takes note of the subdued nature of his reality, and realization sinks in.

they banished him. and jo, jo gave up her magic to do it. they locked him out of the real world into the ether. he was essentially a myth now, a freaking spook, an imaginary fiend. he's going to live forever in this plane of nothingness, unable to connect with anyone ever again, not even a fucking ghost, not even another poor, banished fool, because being banished to the ether is a curse that leaves a person utterly and completely alone, a fucking shadow peeking into the real world. tears sting his eyes. his lungs are actually collapsing in his chest.

he wants to scream. he does. he rages and throws things, but it's like he can only touch ghost images of them - the physical forms don't move at all. jo gets over her uneasiness and continues to pack while kai screams her name, again and again, his voice falling on deaf ears. the sting of betrayal is sharper the second time around, a scorpion strike to a bee sting. he wants to know why and he pleads for her to tell him as she packs her life away into boxes. _why did you do this? why to me? i came the closest to loving you, iloveyouwhatdidyoudojo? what. did. you. do?_

and worse still, the question he feared too much to let past his lips: _why wasn't I enough_?

* * *

AN: FFN fucking with my formatting got me all kinds of fucking riled. This should be all posted by tomorrow, there are only three chapters and the next two are being edited/finished up. See more notes on AO3 post if interested. Dedicated to my lovelies, Albion19 and respectable_alcoholic.


	2. arc ii: the branding

_my hands float up above me_

 _and you whisper you love me_

 _and i begin to fade_

 _into our secret place_

 _the music makes me sway_

 _the angels singing say we are alone with you_

 _i am alone and they are too with you_

* * *

mystic falls, virginia. podunk and so quaint it was ugly and dull as all hell aside from the rather high number of animal attacks. the flight between portland and the small town was a boring affair and instead of haunting his sister (as he's now dedicated himself to doing - she is still all he knows, after all) and figuring out a way to choke her in her sleep, he spent most of his time in the pet hangar and the cockpit. the dogs whined as he moved by them and he found it amusing. he's a wraith now, a scarier thing than he has ever been before. he got as close as he could to the caged creatures, watched them yip and growl and press themselves into the back corners, watched them piss when he would shout 'boo!' and make unseemly noises.

whatever. at least they acknowledge him.

kai is conquering the ether the best he can. he's learned that he can pretty much teleport to where a person is if he focuses on them hard enough; he did it to jo and joshua and the wonder twins who stole his crown. he's also gotten better at manipulating inanimate objects, now able to phase through them or handle them at will, although the second is a lot harder and requires intense concentration. living things and organic tissue still seem to repel his touch.

on the plane, he stole a bag of peanuts, and got really sick while munching on them. even if he still sleeps, his body apparently doesn't need food anymore, no matter how much he misses eating and cooking. just trying left him feeling like he was being torn apart while the nuts in his stomach repelled his very existence. he supposes it doesn't matter - as far as he understands, since jo's the one who forged the last seal on the banishment curse, it's her magic keeping him alive and locked away. he can't be cut off completely since he's not dead, hence it's her life force sustaining him while he's in the ether. he wonders what will happen to him if something bad were to happen to jo. it's not like he could ask anyone.

once he threw up the peanuts and the feeling of vertigo was gone, he abandoned the half-empty bag of planters in the walkway and instead made ugly faces at the pilot in the cockpit. the guy never reacted, not even when kai pulled down his pants and flashed him. it was both hilarious and a bit insulting. kai thinks he has a fantastic penis and that the sight of it should have _at least_ elicited a scandalized gasp. some people have no taste, it seems.

when they finally arrive in mystic falls, he tries to cut ahead of his sister by focusing on 'ms. sheila' - he can't, and so he learns that he has to know a person to jump to them. he waits for his sister to unboard and follows her to baggage claim, where a stern-looking and fucking powerful dark-skinned woman (a coven leader or the matriarch of witch clan no doubt), a young woman around their age who looks like her younger, hotter clone, and a toddler whose hair is tied up in little puffs are waiting for jo. he starts when he recognizes the young woman as abby bennett and the name sheila finally clicks in his head. the bennetts. jo spent their seventeenth year with them when she requested sheila to be her non-coven mentor. kai had gone to train with the martins and practiced alongside jonas under his mother benita.

sheila's stern expression softens slightly when jo hugs abby and gushes over the little girl, bonnie. kai observes the scene, once again an outsider, even more so than before. he doesn't notice the way bonnie watches him curiously, doesn't think on it when she seems to stare directly at him over abby's - her mother, which is a weird thought - shoulder when the three women make their way to the car. he doesn't notice until he phases into the backseat of the car, tucked in by the little girl's car seat, and her gaze doesn't waver from his form. it's creepy, little witchlings are creepy-ass kids, and kai is definitely creeped out.

experimentally, he wriggles his fingers in her face and to his delighted surprise, she at last blinks her big, green peepers and giggles. the sound catches jo's attention and she turns to coo at the baby, who continues to laugh softly at the new playmate only she can see.

* * *

jo starts her final two years of undergrad (kai bitterly wonders when did she even start college and why didn't she tell him, but then he remembers how she pretty much shut him out for the last few years. 'you'll always have me, kai,' he mutters to himself in a mocking, high pitched voice. fucking _liar_ ) at the oh-so-prestigious whitmore college. sheila bennett is tenured and teaches occult studies and several different history courses there. her research into mayan rituals of human sacrifice as means of opening gateways between worlds is particularly fascinating.

at first, he spends all his time haunting jo, but her schedule is crammed with an overload of classes as well as studying into the wee hours of the night. she also works as sheila's ta, so pretty much all her time is spent on campus and any free time she has, she spends cuddled up to alaric, who had followed her to mystic falls. it's a dull routine. not even fucking around with her things to scare her seems worth the effort when she's too tired or too caffeinated to notice.

so he ditches her in favor of following around the local hot mama, abby bennett. in his absence, he's unaware of the way jo's guilty gaze will sometimes linger on her bare wrist, feeling bereft and alone for reasons unknown to her after his constant presence finally dwindles.

abby's life is actually more interesting, what with her being a married (kai thinks that's too bad, especially considering her soulmate is a mundane - what a waste of good witch) young mom, a practicing witch, and flower shop runner. he tries to avoid her whenever she's alone with her husband or whenever little miss bonbon is around.

it's really stupid, he knows, but something about the child sets kai on edge. being around her unnerves the hell out him and he doesn't know why. aside from her being able to see him occasionally, she's unremarkable to any other witchling he's been around and he's been around quite a few. yet he is simultaneously drawn to and repulsed by the child, having found himself checking in on her naps and matching his breath to hers several times, like some kind of creep, before he realized where he was and sequestering himself away from her nursery. the presence of the baby twists his guts up in uncomfortable ways, to the point where he feels both like some kind of weirdo and like he's about to vomit all over his combat boots.

the real kicker is as much as he tries to avoid her, she tries seek him out, even though she can't always see him. she's sneaky like a fucking ninja too, having silently come up to him several times and shouting a cheerful, childlike 'hi!' that has kai skipping about two feet into the air. he always ignores her and walks away, but she is undeterred, following him about and chattering on about the inane things children find important, until he has to jump away to someone else's side - usually her very attractive mom. she's asked him several times to not 'go poof', pitched a fit about it once, but kai can't help it. he feels itchy around her and as sweet of a child as he's noticed her to be, she. creeps. him. out. the only time he can safely be around her is when she's sleeping, and even then, she stirs more the closer he gets. whatever the weirdness is that exists between him and this kid, the witchling feels it too and copes with it the best way she can - by badgering him when she knows he's around.

if it was any other little girl, kai would attribute her obsessiveness to a mild crush or an attachment to a big brother figure since she was an only child and he would be amused. but it's bonnie bennett, so all kai can do is run away. he spends a lot of his time sleeping on the roof, well out of the little girl's reach. he enjoys the way the sun beats down on him, and because he's in the ether, mosquitos and biting flies avoid him. cat naps and watching abby do vinyasa yoga become a solace.

when he sleeps, he dreams of little butterflies made of brittle human bones. they burn up in a bonfire they can't seem to escape.

* * *

kai's never had to deal with vampires before, but as far as he knows, vampires are freakazoid monsters that ruin everything they touch, especially the lives of the witches they interact with. and right as bonnie starts the first grade, abby bennett faces off against the most freakiest leech of them all. he's not sure what happens; dark magic pounds against the ether to the point he can almost taste the magic begging him to steal it. he can't of course - no touchy - but he wants to so bad.

when the good fight is over, he kind of wishes he still could. mikael, the big daddy baddie of the original vampires is desiccated and magically sealed in a sepulchre. abby bennett, hot milf extraordinaire, is comatose and pretty much a vegetable aside from the strong brain activity. standing by her bedside with rudy, he can feel the man's overwhelming despair and the woman's stinging anger. it's an uncomfortable spot to be in, but kai forces himself to stay. he wonders what will happen with bonnie.

he follows rudy hopkins after he leaves his sleeping soulmate to pick up bonnie, wonders what the now functionally single father will say to her. he doesn't have to say anything. bonnie, who is waiting in the front hall with the rest of the car pick-up kids, takes one look at her somber parent and says 'mama's gonna be 'sleep for a long time, huh?'

rudy's face crumples.

witchlings are such creepy fucking kids, kai thinks.

* * *

he can't tolerate the grief in the bennett-hopkins household. it cuts him like salted blades, so kai goes back to spending the majority of the time fucking with his sister. it's way less boring this time around - she's just started her residency, focusing on saving lives and being a saint. what a phoney, phoney, little girl.

he can't let her be happy, so he sabotages her. changes her charts, makes her mess up during consultations and surgeries. she gets scolded by her overseeing fellow a lot and kai finds it hilarious. he is vindicated. she ruined his life to make one for herself and now he's working to disassemble that brick by fucking brick.

he pokes holes in the condoms alaric buys. jo wants nothing to do with him, or their coven or anything that reminds her of the life she had as witch. she's careful about sex, because if she gets pregnant with twins, she has to fall back into the fold. kai uses this. he won't let her escape. josette parker will never be rid of him, no matter how far she runs.

* * *

'do you know the times table?' bonnie asks suddenly. she's bent over a worksheet and her sudden question startles kai. she sees him less often now that she's older, but he's gotten used to the second grader pretending he's not around over the years, even during the times she can see him clear as day. it's easier to be around her when she's not constantly yammering at him and considering what happened to abby the last year he likes to check on her more than he did before. he can't shake the feeling something bad is coming her way. it's the same feeling he had before the night he has banished. seeing her, at least, reassures him that child he's slowly come to see as someone important to him is okay.

her emotions and thoughts are damn rollercoaster though. the efficacy of her affects is mind-boggling for someone of her age and kai can only handle it in small doses.

her grams thinks she has an affinity for the dead, that she sees spirits, because she spent so much of her early childhood talking at him (not to him. he only started replying after abby got hurt and her father worked longer hours and sheila couldn't play three separate roles and loneliness seemed to be mounting in the kid. for whatever reason, the idea of bonnie bennett all alone really bugged him.), even when he wasn't where she thought he was. the older witch thought it was amusing, but asked her to pretend to be like her friends elena and caroline - her _best_ friends, elena was her _sister_ \- who didn't have her special gift. the bennett matriarch has yet to explain her witch heritage to the bonster, which kai thinks is dumb, especially after what happened with abby and that original vampire she desiccated.

he supposes that when dark magic puts one's daughter into a permanent medical coma, one would become wary of utilizing the craft around said daughter's young child. kai thinks bonnie should train while she's young anyway so she has better control. already, the witchling is showing an unnatural draw to flames, which could be disastrous.

but whatever, he's not her mentor or her parent-guardian. it's none of his damn business how sheila raises the girl into magic.

'i know you can hear me,' she sasses and kai sighs.

'yes, bonnie, i know the times table.'

she looks up and frowns at him - it seems today he was quite visible, despite the fact she could never hear him. 'are you ever going to talk to me? at least tell me your name?'

he grins. 'i talk to you all the time. and i'm named for heaven, just like you're named for beauty.'

'what if i guess your name? will you tell me if i get it?' he knows she'll never guess, but he nods his consent anyway. at the movement, she takes a moment to ponder. 'michael?' she asks after a bit and kai sniggers. it's eerily close; she got a lot of the letters right. freaky.

still, he shakes his head and bites back another grin as she pouts anew. she's kinda cute for all that she can act like a brat.

'thought you had a question for me' he redirects her by pointing at her homework and she turns her frown down to her worksheet.

'will you check my times twelve, please?'

* * *

jo gets pregnant. she spends two days crying about it, doesn't breath a word to alaric. then she terminates it. kai is admittedly surprised by her determination to disconnect from the gemini. she seems okay to everyone, doesn't let on to her little secret at all. but kai senses the moroseness that follows her like a cloud. it's a heavy cloud, dense and suffocating, the emotional equivalent of a hurricane. it kinda kills his enthusiasm to ruin her life and he subtly backs off for now, turns his focus elsewhere.

* * *

childhood passes bonnie by with relative ease. she has her ditzy little friends, and her dancing, and her schoolwork to keep her busy. he's bored when she's not around, spends the time she's in school digging through sheila's stuff to try and find the bennett grimoires, reading, reading, reading everything he can hold for any amount of time. or he messes with jo, but his antics have decreased from sabotage to harmless, albeit mischievous, pranks. he's been in the ether long enough by now to have conquered it's logistics, he's good at timing it so he goes with bonnie when she visits abby at the hospital. jo's there most of the time, and he does dumb shit to her, like salting her coffee or hiding all of her pens so that she never has anything to write with.

often, he watches bonnie interact with his sister, who attends to the comatose bennett. abby is the first patient exclusively under jo, the new doctor insistent that she be the one to care for her friend. listening to bonnie prattle on to her sleeping mom about the details of her day, the latest fight caroline and elena dragged her in the middle of, and how jeremy was being more annoying than usual becomes routine to kai. inane, mundane things any girl her age would talk about. nothing special.

still, kai can't help but to hang onto every word. it's both desperation for connection and vigilance over an ever worsening state. kai's become her best kept secret and he's become something akin to a guard dog over these past few years. he feels disconnected to everything that is not her and he knows he is her closest companion. sometimes she will whisper secrets into the air, hoping he's around to hear them. he always is.

* * *

bonnie hasn't talked to him days, utterly ignoring him even when it seems she can see him. she seems down about something. he tells her little anecdotes or jokes, hoping that by some miracle she'll hear and laugh, but she never responds. kai's a little annoyed that an eleven-year-old girl can make him feel like the moody preteen between them, but he supposes that since she's the one being pissy, he can't claim the title solo. brat.

jo comes to visit and bonnie flings herself at his twin, who as tired as she was, definitely looked kai's real age. asking questions about her mom and what it's like being a doctor and can bonnie please be the flower girl in her wedding? jo laughs and assures the girl that her mom is fine aside from playing sleeping beauty, that being a doctor is both fun and exhausting, and of course bonnie was going to be the flower girl, was there ever any question? kai spends a lot of time hovering around jo, and bonnie puts space between them when he does; that's when he knows she can see him today. the distance makes him sullen and jo confused and mildly hurt.

he doesn't understand the way bonnie appraises the twins, but he notices the glint of something bitter in bonnie's green eyes when she asked jo if she used to have a tall boyfriend with dark-hair. at first, jo is confused, but he can tell the moment bonnie's description of him hits her full force. a part of him is vindicated at the flash of hurt and horror and utter guilt on her face. a part of him is furious with bonnie because he doesn't know what her problem is. jo rubs her blank wrist and says mutedly 'he was my soulmate.'

the answer's not the whole truth, but it isn't a lie either. it causes bonnie's onslaught of questions to pause. 'but i thought ric - ?'

'he is. i had two. ric and my twin brother, kai. malachai. how did you know about him?'

there's too much tension in the question for it to pass as the casual inquiry jo was aiming at. bonnie flicks her eyes toward him and back to jo. he's surprised at how easy the lie comes out of her mouth. 'i had a dream about you and he was in it.'

'i see,' jo's relief is nearly it's own entity. 'do you want to know something about him?'

bonnie only hesitates for a moment before -

'what was he like? how did he die?'

it's so blunt. of course, it's bonnie. always aiming for the heart of things.

jo smiles softly. it's not an expression kai's ever seen on her face, too bittersweet and self-depreciative for any situation he's ever seen her in. 'he liked to cook and swim. he was mischievous and liked to pull pranks on people,' she scoffs.

'he usually went too far. he was bright and goofy. he was super smart - almost as smart as you,' the comparison makes bonnie smile. 'he was both the most charming person i ever met and the most lonely - he had a hard time connecting to people, even though they usually liked being around him. i think i was his only real friend, and even then it might have only been because we were twins.'

kai rolls his eyes. what the hell was jo on? who? who liked being around him? girls who wanted to fuck him? guys who wanted to emulate him so girls would want to fuck them too? not a single person other than jo really knew who kai was and even then she had never wanted to share with him who she was becoming. kai had thought she loved him, might have even thought that now from the way she was speaking if he didn't know better.

no one, not even own his family, had ever wanted kai.

'was he magic? like mama?' the question draws kai back to the interrogation and jo looks at bonnie sharply.

the girl shrugs. 'grams likes to pretend it's not real, but...i know. i can do things and i see things and i remember when mama used to make feathers float. it's magic.'

jo bites her lip, contemplating. finally she sighs and utters, 'you're a witch. so is your mom and ms. sheila. so am i, even though i don't have magic anymore.'

the witchling takes a moment to digest this before continuing. 'was your brother? why don't you have magic?'

'he was...different. he was a siphon - a magic-eater. a witch that could take magic from external sources, but couldn't make his own,' jo pauses for a long moment. 'the two of us were supposed to become leader of our coven - a group of witches - but he found out something that would make it so we couldn't. he did a really bad thing one night and as a result, he disappeared. my magic left the night kai did.'

kai scoffs bitterly at that and bonnie's gaze once again flashes to him and away.

'did he kill himself?'

it's a long time before jo answers. when she does, all she says is 'in a way, i think he did.'

bonnie has enough sense to retreat. she looks at kai once more, briefly, and kai thinks bitterly that she'll be done with him too, now that she's had a taste of how ugly he really was. kai shakes his head at himself. thirty-one and the closest thing he had to a friend is a freaking child twenty years his junior. he's never felt so low.

he disappears to the rooftop and listens to the sounds of jo and bonnie preparing dinner for when sheila gets back from the college. it's so domestic. kai must've watched the routine a million times, pretended to be more than the scenery just so he could fake normalcy. what a fucking joke.

he's not sure when he dozed off or how much time has passed, but he jerks to attention when he hears the shingles next to him scrape. he sees bonnie making her way towards him and nervousness floods his belly. he can't catch her if she falls. he tells her as much, but of course she doesn't hear him. she plops down next to him. they sit comfortably together in silence for a long time, neither too eager to break the ice. they're sitting still, but the tension dances in the space between them.

'you always hang around jo when we go to the hospital, so i thought you were in love with her or something. that you died before you could tell her or...or,' she stutters. 'i don't know. i was trying to help.'

kai chuckles. 'i'm not dead,' he looks up at the darkened sky. 'sometimes i wish though.'

bonnie comes in closer, a finger raised to poke his shoulder. the digit goes right through him and they both shudder.

'you're harder to see lately. like, i see you about the same amount of time, but you're less solid each time. i'm worried.'

it's both a flattering and alarming sentiment, in that it's been so long since anyone's shown any concern for him and that it reinforces the feeling of disconnection he's had to the things around him. the ether is changing, somehow, impossible as it seems, becoming more burdensome. he feels like a flame buried under it's own ash.

he shoots a smile at bonnie, then taps the spot next to him as he lies down. bonnie eases down next to him and they both watch stars that are burnt out by street lights and population. what would he have to give up in order to touch them, to fly through those clouds? would she come with him?

with heavy eyes, kai starts to drift off to sleep under the presence of his growing witchling. the last thing he feels is the way the ether pushes her away when her hand comes close to brushing against his own.

* * *

it isn't until he wakes up to sheila screaming at bonnie to 'git down from up there, girl! what's wrong with you!?' and bonnie is looking around like she can't see him anymore, that he wonders why bonnie was so upset when she thought he used to be jo's lover. the possibilities make his heart race and that makes him uncomfortable.

* * *

he's so tired.

there's no reason for him to be. he's not doing anything different. from what he's seen, neither is jo, so if it has something to do with his connection to her, her busy physician life doesn't seem to be any more hectic than it already was.

she's getting married though.

and her magic was growing weaker each day she continued to ignore it and pull away from her past. maybe that was it. the last thing jo could do to symbolically cut herself off from her old life was to completely bind herself to her new one. perhaps when she does, he might be lost in the ether forever.

the thought stirs very little in kai. he tries to frown, but he doesn't think he can control the muscles in his face. his head is foggy. he wants to lie down.

with as much effort as he can muster, he focuses his thoughts on bonnie and jumps to her room, where she is doing homework and talking on the house phone to her friend.

'yeah, caroline, i got _pirates of the caribbean_. we can watch it when you come by later.' she is quiet, listening to the blonde talk and kai falls heavily onto the teenybopper's bed. she looks over shoulder when it squeaks, but turns back to her incredibly taxing fifth grade homework when she obviously doesn't see him. bonnie snorts at something her friend says and starts to talk again.

her voice is a balm and kai is so tired. he falls asleep to the sound her laughter. he dreams about horned beasts and butterflies, all made of bone and ash and smoke.

* * *

the day jo finally marries alaric is the worst day of kai's fucked up life, including the day his twin banished him into the ether.

the preparations and rehearsal had had everyone in a tizzy, but now that it's all settled, kai can admit the turnout is rather beautiful. he peeked in at jo in her dress and his twin looked almost ethereal all in white.

he hates her.

the sensation of falling apart and fading has gotten increasingly stronger the last few weeks, confirming kai's belief that this final bond to jo's soulmate will finally cut him off from her for good. the only time he feels better is when he's sitting by the witchling and even then, he spends most of his time sleeping. usually kai would say he loved weddings, with all the free food and fancy dress and line dancing, but this is the first he would happily see crashed and burned.

sheila stays near jo, so close to the woman getting hitched that they are family, ready to give her away when the time comes. bonnie sits in the bridal room with them, she and her two little friends, the three of them looking like a collection of living dolls.

at twelve, bon's a little old to be a flower girl, but she's also the youngest person jo personally knows, having cut contact with the gemini coven and that life in general. still, kai thinks bonnie looks incredibly pretty in the mint-colored dress jo picked out. he can't begrudge his little witchling her fun; watching her gush about the romance with caroline and elena, and dance around with them as they await their cues is amusing.

he drifts around the venue, taking note of all the seating arrangements and decorations. stopping by the groom's suite, he takes a moment to hide ricky boy's shoes. the effort it took to concentrate long enough to move them about leaves him feeling drained, so soon enough he finds himself back amongst the women, where the only people he found at all interesting were gathered.

this time bonnie must see him, because her gaze drifts towards him automatically when he sits and she shoots him a brief smile, something her bird-minded friends didn't even notice. he smiles back, already feeling better, and waves. the young bennett excuses herself from her friends and sweeps out of the room. she obviously wants kai to follow, so he does.

when they are far away enough, she turns to him with a smile. 'excited?' she asks. he shrugs.

'no reason to be,' he replies. 'i knew they were going to be together since that stupid feather popped up on her arm.'

'it's so romantic!' bonnie continues. she sounds so invested, almost as though she heard him and was countering him. 'it's soulmates. they're meant to be. i think it's so romantic. one day, i'm going to meet my soulmate and we're going to get married too, just like this! and my parents!'

kai chuckles. 'the grand dream of you and every other preteen sap in the world,' he teases. she frowns at him, angry that he seems to be laughing at her, but then something in her gaze seems to soften. perhaps she was remembering that kai was also jo's soulmate, once upon a time. he rubs at the place where his birthmark once resided along with piece of his twin that she had given him and taken away.

'did you have another soulmate too?' she asks softly. kai looks up and stares at her, almost stricken.

he didn't. maybe things might have been different if he had. he shakes his head.

bonnie reaches to take his hand, but phases through him, the unnatural interaction causing an unpleasant flutter to go through both of them. they both pull away from each other. bonnie continues to look at him sadly, opens her mouth to give some consolation, he's sure, but kai shakes his head with a bitter smile. he doesn't want to hear it.

'bonnie?' elena's voice rings down the hall, and both witches lean back, unaware of how close they'd been drawn in again. physical and ether, female and male, youth and adult, they turn to face the other brunette in mirrored tandem.

'come on,' she coaxes the bennett. 'the ceremony is about to start.'

they go and kai follows behind, sits on the alter just behind the officiator and watches the proceedings in mild interest. bonnie glances at him covertly every now and then, but doesn't seem overly perturbed by his presence, having grown use to being the only one aware of him. after sometime, even her gaze begins to flit around searchingly and he knows he's faded from her too.

it's not surprising. he feels heavy and sleepy again. kai becomes more interested in the chandeliers posted above everyone's heads. he imagines them as flames and thinks he sees bony, little butterflies flitting through the licks.

there's a kink in his world when jo says her vows. kai feels heavier and heavier. he wonders if this was how abby felt before her fall, if...what?

kai loses the train of thought. he continues watching the butterflies - not butterflies, he realizes, sphenoid bones, just like out of jo's medical anatomy text - flutter and float through fire.

it's not until he hears alaric utter his name that he's drawn back to the present. he's still sitting on the alter, but everyone else has moved outside to the reception tent. the doors are open and alaric stands near them, dancing softly with bonnie. it's weird - something that should be cute and touching, a veritable hallmark moment, but the sight is all wrong. bonnie looks stricken and alaric looks somber.

why had he said kai's name? the siphon hops down from his pedestal and makes his way over to the swaying figures.

'it's a hard subject for jo, bonnie, please don't ask about it anymore,' alaric is saying.

no.

'that night, she lost three of her siblings because of kai, and she used her magic to banish him to some other plane of existence. i don't know enough about magic or witches to know why you're dreaming about him, but it's not good.'

no. _no._

'so please don't go looking further. kai's a bad guy. a murderer. he killed kids around your age - his younger _siblings_. nothing good can come of looking for him.'

 _no, no, nononono!_

alaric's tale comes to an end and kai watches as bonnie's faith in him shatters and he loses the little bit of life he has to cling to. the groom leaves and bonnie is left staring after him, before her betrayed face turns to kai. he knows she can see him by her small gasp and the way she draws back.

stretching out, he tries to grasp at her shoulder, but the girl pulls away from him. recoiling. disgusted. the chasm he felt crack open when jo said 'i do' widens as bonnie looks at him, horror and distrust written all over her young face. his chest burns.

'stay away from me,' she hisses in a soft, venomous snarl. 'you're a monster. don't ever come near me again.'

quickly, she turns on a heel and let's herself get spirited away by a young boy who looked like elena gilbert.

as she turns from him, the burning feeling on kai's chest flares so hotly he drops to his knees; it's a pain he's felt before he thinks, a night nearly a decade before. it seems like the world flickers briefly, goes grey and then suddenly he is looking at his father's angry face as lucas and olivia cling to him tightly. things flicker once more and he is back at the wedding - he thinks. it's so quiet, the sound of voices coming toward him as though it was coming from a decrepit radio. everything is so grey and fuzzy to the point that he can barely recognize things for way they are. figures blend with ground. people move in slow, stuttered ways, like shitty stop-point animation. he tries to grap at a chair or table, something to help support his dying body.

surely he's having a heart attack.

the world flickers again, and he's back in front of his father, who's chanting now. another flicker, and it's abby bennett, falling into a sleep she cannot escape. another - joey's still body floating facedown in his pool back home in portland. another - rudy in the hospital, staring blankly over a comatose abby. another - olivia hiding behind lucas. another - jo pulling his hunting knife out of her abdomen.

each flicker lends itself to the beating kai feels he's taking. a shovelful after another of dirt on his grave. more weight on kai's heavy body. the last flicker shows him bonnie, squishy and cute, laughing at her new friend.

then it all flickers out and this time, kai is truly alone.

* * *

banishment to the ether hurt less than being cast out to wherever he is now - some lower, more sinister level of the plane, perhaps. the first few days in the ether so long ago, he think he was being recalibrated in the darkness before being trapped in the ghost state.

now, he is stuck in this state of constant regret. sometimes, he's trapped in memories - his own, jo's, and even bonnie's - quite literally reliving all of his greatest hits of fuckery. other times, he can see the real world, but it's like seeing things through a kaleidoscope of broken stain glass. other times he sees things that haven't happened yet, might not happen. he's trapped in his head, in memories and premonitions and bare interactions with the real world. it's like being trapped in a snow globe, and the all the things he sees are the flurries of glitter reflecting light and hope that kai cannot touch.

when kai is free of the glitter, his snowglobe a big barren wasteland. he walks through a modern mystic falls that looks like something out of a vintage photograph. it's empty everywhere, but uncanny too, because things will move on their own. kai figures this is the real world interacting with his new prison. he is desperate for those phantom changes. it means there's something else other than him and his dreams.

kai can't still can't eat, but now he can't sleep anymore either - which doesn't matter, since he still dreams. it drives him to madness. he tries to kill himself once, by jumping off the clock tower. right when he should have been cherry pancakes on the gravel, he finds himself back at the top. he tries again and again, to the same result. madness.

nothing changes. not kai. not his dreams. he lies in the middle of the road, basking in sunlight he can't feel and lives in his head. chasing visions. it's the only way he can see other people.

* * *

time passes. drifting in and out of his head, he eventually stops watching other people and focuses mostly on bonnie. kai gets tired of reliving things he can't fix and looking at vacuums of futures that he destroyed. his punishment is absolute, he thinks. there's no running from what he did and he feels terrible about his past. so instead, he converges on the one future he cares about.

he wonders how many of his visions of her came true. did vampire brothers come to town and realter her world. did sheila die? did bonnie actually get into a relationship with the dark-haired vampire? did she face off against the rest originals? did abby wake up? were there two elena's? did bonnie fall in love with the gilbert boy? were there werewolves she fought against? or did she join them? why did she go to nova scotia? why was she fighting with jo?

it's all bonnie in his head because she's all he can stand to see.

* * *

time passes. her voice rings in his head now. it gets louder as the days drift by and tugs on his interest. kai begins to focus, slips back into his reality.

things are still shitty. still empty. some storefronts have changed. kai wonders exactly how much time has passed. bonnie's voice still rings out, but it's less in his head and more in the air around him. it freaks kai out.

looking around wildly, he notes that he's still alone. so why...? bonnie's voice changes; it's less general murmuring, and more desperate. alarm grips kai. his chest aches. the sound of her voice grows more substantial and he starts to follow it.

he finds himself underground somewhere and her desperation has settled into fervent rhythms. it's familiar to kai and he's surprised at how long it takes him to place that it's chanting. bonnie is spellcasting.

what the fuck is going on?

her voice becomes more focused now and the air around him shifts too. throbbing, pounding. like the night abby faced off against mikael, he can feel heavy magic slamming against the walls of the ether. he can practically taste it and for the first time in almost two decades, kai feels hungry. the magic whips at him and he wants to reach out to touch it.

so he does and to his surprise, he siphons it. his snowglobe leaks. the world becomes slightly more saturated.

bonnie stands facing him, chanting with her eyes closed. candles were lit all around. she is older, curvier, _adult_ \- he thinks she would be pretty if not for the streams of black veins lining her body.

' _phasmatos revilis un animum._ '

in his head, a vision flickers. kai sees bonnie gasp and fall, sheila grasping her shoulder, her revelation - 'oh my god...i'm dead.'

and right when she begins to gasp, kai grabs at her, desperate - not her, not her, _not her, please god no, not her_ \- and begins to siphon. he doesn't notice the impossibility of the contact, only knows he needs to divert the magic, give it a second conduit, needs to protect her from the backlash of her poor choice. the magic lashes out, angry, before latching onto its new victim.

a pain in his chest flares up, long forgotten and bonnie's eyes fly open. for a moment, all that exists is them, everything else - the vortex of magic around them, the fact that bonnie is trying to resurrect the dead by using way too much magic she can't control, and sheila's hovering ghost - all cease to exist.

kai eats the magic trying to kill his little witchling. something dark blooms across the flesh of their chests. then both of their eyes fall shut and they fall. mirror images, butterfly wings. soulmates reunited.


	3. arc iii: the lovers

Note: The devil is in the details, but he's hard to catch when you work over 50 hours in four days. There's a part in here that's a shout out to the amazing mysticfalls-originals. If you read this: you're fucking awesome. Listen to "Single" by The Neighbourhood (which is my favorite BK song of all time) during Kai-Rudy interactions bc I think it sums up those scenes well. There's also a specific scene in the woods near the end of the chapter. I suggest listening to Sam Smith's acoustic version of "Latch" while reading. Or the instrumental version of The Weeknd's "The Hills" because dat beat bruh. It can make a stripper out of a nun. I tried to ease up on the angst this time around although...yeah, there's still some of that. I can't help it. I'm angst trash. After four - five? - rewrites and several interruptions to my writing process, I am finally done with this. Happy holidays, you fucks.

* * *

 _take my hand_

 _i give it to you_

 _now you own me_

 _all I am_

 _you said you would never leave me_

 _i believe you_

 _i believe_

* * *

he's a real boy again and the world is far too loud and bright for his tastes.

his hands are clenched into tight fists when the waitress brings his coffee and bagel. he shoots her a tight smile in thanks and stares at the food when she leaves. already his stomach is heaving in protest; he hasn't eaten anything in over fifteen years. in the few months he's been back, his appetite hasn't really returned. he used to be the kind of person who was never full. it's just one more thing about him that's different.

he feels like a newborn, hit by the onslaught of the world he's been reborn into.

nothing about it is soothing: not the sheeple who don't question the animal attacks. not the random bouts of supernatural fuckery that have the ghosts of dead people walking around and interacting with the living one moment and then vanishing the next. not the overabundance of leeches in the general population. it's little wonder he still feels so jarred.

subconsciously, he rubs at the spot over his chest. bonnie is something about him that's different as well. the soulmark that had blossomed over his chest the night he saved her from death-by-magical-overdose is reminder of his connection to her, even if she's sequestered herself far away from him.

once again, kai thinks bitterly, someone doesn't want him. he tells himself to stop being so dramatic, so stupid. even if he thinks he should be used to the sting of abandonment, this time around, it's not like it was a conscious decision. still, it's bonnie who's denied him. there's no soothing that.

it is, of course, different because she's his soulmate, his real one. he didn't choose bonnie and she didn't choose him, although if he'd had to pick a soulmate for himself once more, then bonnie would be it. he suspects the same can't be said for the girl in question. perhaps she might have long ago, before she knew the truth about him.

at any rate, it's something that can't be confirmed under current standings.

kai picks at the bagel. he really has no appetite these days. slipping a ten underneath the plate, he gets up and leaves.

* * *

 _a cough rips out of kai, pushing out something that blocks the air passage in his throat. a mixture of spittle and blood dribbles from his mouth, covering his chin. his head hurts, a sticky swab of blood beneath his head. whatever it is he's lying on, wherever he is, it's too warm and harsh on his body._

 _the observation has kai's eyes flying open. less than a foot across from him, bonnie lies parallel, eyes closed and breath even. relief and disbelief wash over him in equal measure. he reaches out for her. pauses. takes a breath. grasps her shoulder._

 _nothing untoward happens. he holds her shoulder like it was nothing. he doesn't phase through. there's no unpleasant shiver. just his hand on her shoulder in simple human contact._

 _he takes a moment to marvel before he realizes that she's still knocked unconscious from whatever ludicrousy she'd been attempting before. gently rocking her, kai props himself up so he can look her over._

' _bonnie?' he calls. his voice sounds strained and weak to his own ears. 'bonnie? please wake up.'_

 _he tries to focus on her, any thoughts and feelings that might be drifting astray from her mind, but all he catches is a blank chasm. it's alarming. she's there, in front of him, breathing and okay, but she's gone. not even abby was this blank in her coma._

 _kai grips at her harder, starts to shake her more, when movement catches his gaze and he looks up. sheila bennett is watching him, suspicion on her sharp features. the siphon disregards it._

' _help her!' he pleads. 'i can't sense her, she's not here. please!'_

 _sheila's brows furrow. 'i can't. she's beyond my help now.'_

* * *

sharp knocking on his bedroom door yanks kai out of the nightmare into a sitting position. his sweat-soaked sheets cling to him as kai tries to depart the bed, grossing him out. he needs a shower and a change in linens or else he'll be grumpy for the rest of the day. tossing the bedding to the floor, kai goes to open his bedroom door.

jo is standing on the other side, looking as beautiful and judgemental as ever. he almost slams the door in her face and goes back to bed, but she pushes her way past him. bitch.

shutting the door behind her, kai takes a breath to brace himself, before facing her. he casts a quick glance at his alarm, nearly groans out loud when he sees that it's barely past eight a.m. it's too early for whatever has jo in a mood.

she's watching him expectantly, wary and calm when he faces her. before he can get a word in, she says, 'stay away from bonnie. leave town. go back to portland, i don't care. but leave her alone.'

he wonders what brings this on, is surprised she hasn't come by tell him this before - he's not hard to find. rudy has been letting him crash at sheila's old home not long after the night he came back. the house had gone to him and bonnie when the older witch had passed and rudy rents it out every now and then. he questions where the man is now, since it was unlikely jo just let herself in.

or maybe she did. kai thinks she might still have had a key. he makes a mental note to change the lock.

forcing himself to focus on his twin and her poor topic of conversation, he frowns at her.

'no.' walking around her, he starts stripping off his bed.

'no?' jo parrots incredulously. 'i can force you.'

kai can feel his temper flaring. he has no patience for much of anything that wasn't trying to coerce 5'2" teen witch with the initials b.b. to come back. several soft visions flash through his mind, the most prevalent of them being the image of him gripping jo by the throat, pressed to the wall several inches above the ground with kai siphoning her newly returned magic.

clenching his teeth, he focuses on his chores. he can't let jo get to him, otherwise he'll kill her and subsequently, any chance he has with bonnie when she wakes up. an idea of how to counterattack his abrasive sister without actually attacking her settles in his neurons.

'no, you can't. and you're beating the wrong horse, don't you think?'

'what are you talking about?' frustration makes jo snap and her temper sparks his again. dropping the sheets, he whirls to face his impetuous sister with a growl. if she wants to be nasty, kai can do her one better. his mean streak has always been pretty wide.

'where the hell have you been these past few years, huh?' he digs. 'you built a pretty cozy life for yourself here, haven't you? so why weren't _you helping her?_ why weren't you trying to stop her? she overdosed on magic that night, josette, the only reason she's even alive is because i siphoned the excess.'

jo looks afflicted, guilt and anger equal players in her aura, but kai's on a role. 'you really care about her, right? that's why you're so hell bent on keeping me out of her life? but not the bloodsuckers that always push her to use magic she's not trained to handle? not the so-called best friends she has that drop her the second they get distracted by dick? because they're sooo good for her well being, right josette?'

he turns his back to her, gathering up the sheets off the floor and dropping them in the laundry hamper. soon after, the t-shirt he rips off his frame is dumped on top. he can see jo, in his peripheral, staring at his chest. her thoughts bombard him, but kai pushes the fuzzy machinations away.

'fuck off, jo,' he dismisses and carries his basket of sweat-drenched items past her. when he gets back to his room, she's long gone.

* * *

hours after he gets his bed sheets smelling like lavender fields, kai finds himself knocking on rudy's door. he rubs the sweat off his palms onto his jeans as he waits.

a moment later rudy hopkins opens the door and kai has to hide his disappointment. some part of him is always hopeful it will be someone just a little shorter, just a little younger and prettier opening the door. looking over the older man, kai thinks he looks far too tired for someone his age. he sends a wide smile at the man, tells himself to be cheery and nice, no matter how venomous he feels. magic has put rudy through enough.

'hi mr. hopkins!' he greets. 'i uh- i came to see bonnie. i wanted to speak with her.'

rudy eyes him coolly.

'she told me to tell you she's not home,' rudy deadpans. at kai's look of half confusion, half elation, he deflates, abandoning the joke. 'come on in. she's in her room. you'll have to wait a bit, the home nurse is giving her a bath.'

he goes back inside towards his study and leaves the door open for kai, who follows him in and shuts the door. the bennett-hopkins home hasn't changed much in the six years he was excommunicated to the deepest reaches of the ether. there's new couch and tv, and the old coffee table had been moved and the number of portraits on the fireplace mantle had grown. but the giant rug and recliner are where they have always been. the curtains are still a soft green and the walls are still a warm ocher.

it still feels like coming home.

kai seats himself on the couch and minutes later, he can hear thudding coming down the stairs. the nurse pauses when she reaches the landing, startled when she spots him. she looks like a deer in the headlights and kai has to bite back a nasty grin. pay attention, kitten.

instead he waves. 'hey, i was just waiting for you to finish up,' he explains. 'mr. hopkins is in his study, to your left.'

the nurse shoots him one more suspicious gaze before following his directions. kai stands and makes his way up to bonnie's room.

the window is open, sunlight streaming in through it along with a soft breeze. bonnie's room has simultaneously gotten more and less girly since the last time kai's seen it. there's less bright colors and zebra print, and more pastels and soft florals. trophies for cheerleading and dancing clutter a bookshelf on one wall, along with pictures of her with caroline and elena over the years. there's decidedly less of those from the past three years or so.

bonnie herself lies on the bed, heart monitor beeping gently. kai goes to occupy the seat next to her and grasps her hand. running his lips over her knuckles, he catches the faint smell of lavender and honey from her sponge bath. someone, probably caroline, has painted the sleeping beauty's nails a soft blue that reminds kai of the ocean.

'i've been cleaning up sheila's place for your old man. painting, changing shingles, designing the yard - i think if i ever get settled back into this life, i might be a contracter. this home improvement stuff is kinda fun,' he tells her. she's a captive audience.

'jo came by to see me today,' he pauses. 'pissed me off. of course. seeing jo always pisses me off.'

he presses another kiss to her knuckles. 'i know she's like family to you, but trust me, that doesn't really mean much to her. she ditched me. she ditched you. she should have been helping you, then maybe you wouldn't -'

kai cuts himself off. he didn't come here to bitch and moan about his life and how much josette complicated it. he came to see bonnie.

being an empath was something kai never really cared about. since he typically gave less than half a fuck about the people he came across, he had usually found being a siphon more useful than being able to sense things about people's mental states and futures. but for the first time in his life, kai is grateful for what his ability means for his soulmate.

lacing his fingers with hers, kai closes his eyes and concentrates on the magic that thrums between them. not bonnie's alone, but something that is theirs, cosmic. the ancient, primeval magic that has linked soulmates since the dawn of humanity. using his empathy, he gives it a track to follow to her mind. his chest feels warm, and he focuses on the sensation, follows it as it pulls him down, down, down.

'you need something?' is the first she asks. the oasis of her mind is a beach today, blazing blue sky on brilliant, azure water and coarse, black sand. she sits in a black two piece swimsuit with various sized roses on it. her back is to him and she's kneeling in the sand, building a sand castle.

kai thinks it's sad that that's the first place her mind goes, that he would only come visit because he needs something from her. the next time kai gets his hands on magic, he's going to curse her silly little posse.

he shakes his head. 'i just wanted to see you.' after his abhorrent nightmare of 'that night #2', and jo's untimely bullshit, kai's need to reassure himself of bonnie's well-being became primordial.

his witchling shifts uncomfortably, seeming to not know how to respond to that. she changes positions a few different times, casting him odd glances out the corner of her eye. kai watches her in mild amusement.

'i don't know what you want from me,' she finally says. he shrugs.

'i told you, i just wanted to see you.'

she sits up straight. 'yeah, but why?'

'i missed you,' he confesses. 'i haven't seen you since jo's wedding night. and then when i do see you again, you're about to die in my arms. and then whenever i try to see you after that...it's not always like this,' he indicates around him. he knows they're both remembering the nightmare scenarios he's been pulled into during her mind's more horrific moments.

bonnie seems to deflate at his words. she grips the bottom half of her face, and fidgets nervously. 'i can't...i can't just forget what you did because we're soulmates. kai, i - that haunts me.'

'i haunt you?' he muses and she grimaces at him, catching the source of his bemusement. the siphon makes his way over to the bennett heir, kneels in the sand next to her. his clothes have shifted from the jeans and t-shirt ensemble he'd worn to visit her, now donning the red trunks of baywatch galore. his soulmark on sits boldly on his sternum and he can see the matching lines of her own peeking out from between her cleavage. he hands her a smaller bucket for her sand castle's turret.

'i'm serious. i can't let that go - you killed people, your younger siblings,' she takes the bucket from him, careful not to touch him.

he nods. 'yes, i did.' she huffs at him, confused and irritated by his nonchalance.

'and what, you just don't care? how can i even try to be with you if you don't care, if i can't forgive you?' she demands.

'it's not your place to forgive me,' he replies. bonnie leans away, indignant, but he takes her hands in his. kai secretly counts it as a victory when she doesn't pull away.

'you don't have to carry that burden, bonnie, you're not atlas. you don't have to carry anyone's pain but your own.'

kai tugs on her hands so that she is closer to him, releases them in favor of cupping her face. pressing their foreheads together, he searches her eyes, which are wide and mesmerized and so incredibly green as they watch him.

'you don't always have to do things for other people, witchling,' he murmurs, his voice going deep. 'sometimes, you can do things for yourself. sometimes you can leave people to figure out how to carry the weight on their own.'

bonnie gazes at him until he releases her, then seems to remember to breathe. she inhales deep and swallows. he tries not to invade her innermost thoughts as they rub against him, but he can't help the glimpses of her desire. the effects kai has on bonnie makes him smile. he is still reconciling her image in his head, the kid whom he came to care for like a ward, and the young woman before him now, definitely no longer a child. but, he thinks, if the universe deems it okay, and she does well, then he's happy moving forward.

'living in your head isn't really living, bonster, believe me,' he murmurs. taking her hand, he stands and tows her toward the water. the tide splashes against their bare feet. he notices her that her fingers and toes are painted a bright, glossy pink.

'wouldn't you rather feel this for real?'

she stares longingly out at the water, before shaking her head. 'i can't. i don't know how.'

'just follow me, exactly like you have been.'

'i'm scared.'

'of what?'

'silas. another klaus. the next big bad to come blowing through town.'

he taps a knuckle under her jaw. 'you don't gotta be, pumpkin. you have something to help you out that you didn't before.'

bonnie looks at him beseechingly.

'you have me.'

* * *

 _sheila fades away right after that dire iteration, leaving kai to his own devices. searching himself and the area around him, kai finds nothing useful to him - whatever magic he siphoned has already leaked out and his clothes, the same from that dreaded night in 1994, don't carry anything more useful than an old pack of gum and his wallet with a few crumpled bills and likely long-expired condoms. nothing that can save bonnie._

 _clutching her head, he holds it against his own, cheek-to-cheek, tears stinging his eyes. despite being an empath, he was never a very empathetic person, but bonnie was the only thing important to him. he could be anything she needed him to be if only it meant she would open those lovely, green peepers._

 _pouring all his focus on her - who she was, the feelings she elicited in him, the memories they shared - he tries desperately to feel her. just a spark, a hint that she was there, that he didn't break out of the ether to save her only to lose her._

 _there's a small whisper of 'grams' and 'jeremy' in his mind and kai nearly whoops in joy. he presses a kiss to her cheek._

' _i've got you, bonnie,' his husky voice reassures them both. 'okay? just hold on.'_

 _patting her down, he finds something rectangular in her back pocket. it reminds him of the cell phone she had in sixth grade, but it's way sleeker and more alien than anything kai's ever seen._

 _how much freaking time has passed?_

 _he pockets the device, vowing to figure it out later, and scoops up the girl. he needs to get her out of here if he's going to get her help, otherwise someone's going to accuse them of cult practices. it wouldn't be far off the mark, but kai doesn't need the complication._

 _he treks outside slowly, trying not to jostle her. he's half focused on remembering his way back and half focused on checking her consciousness, trying to reassure himself that she's still there. they're somewhere at the edge of the woods; he can see the floodlights over the football field at bonnie's school._

 _he feels dreadful; he thinks of goat skulls and burning butterflies and remembers how stupid he was to think it was ever about power._

 _it had always been about the girl lying unconscious in his arms._

 _fiddling with her phone, the screen of it turns on with a 'chk' and kai is suddenly looking at a picture of a smiling bonnie and rudy. vaguely he notices the date, but it doesn't register. kai's too busy wondering what the hell he's supposed to touch when he notices the 'slide to unlock' glowing across the bottom and he traces a finger over it in the same direction it glows. a number pad appears and he growls in frustration._

' _i don't know the fucking passcode, i just wanna call an ambulance, sonuvabi-' he must tap something in his mad smashing of the screen, because '911' and a phone symbol suddenly appear. kai slams the stupid thing to his ear and to his relief he hears an emergency operator._

 _it takes him a while to gather his thoughts and communicate where they are and exactly what's wrong. he must sound drunk. the operator stays on the phone with him the whole time and before long he can see flashlights flickering in the distance and he calls out._

 _when the paramedics show, they have to pry kai off bonnie. it's only with the reassurance that he'll get to stay with her that he let's the emt check his head wound. he keeps his eyes peeled on the girl who has yet to wake, focusing on the soft echoes of her mind._

* * *

when kai resurfaces, he's a bit disappointed that bonnie doesn't follow after him. but he thinks he's made progress today. when he first started these visits it was like diving into black pool at night - nothing but darkness all around. finding her had been a task. now, at least, she's easily reachable, even if she was struggling to break free of the clutch her magic had on her.

standing, kai stretches the kinks out of his body and glances at the window. someone had shut it while he was with bonnie and it one look outside shows that night had fallen.

he wonders how eerie it must be to come into the room when kai was visiting his soulmate, one in a magical coma and the other in a catatonic trance. poor rudy must get shudders. the idea of the stoic, dignified man getting the heebie jeebies because of him makes kai chuckle aloud.

he changes bonnie's nail polish to a color closer to the one she wore in her inner oasis, singing ac/dc's 'hell ain't a bad place to be' while it dries. once that's done, he presses one last kiss to bonnie's cheek, rearranges her covers so that she's tucked in more snuggly, and then leaves.

stopping by rudy's office to say goodbye, he's surprised when the man calls him into the kitchen, where kai finds him with food.

the siphon's stomach growls before either of them can say anything and with a chuckle, rudy indicates the plate of chicken parmigiana for kai. they eat together in relative silence, mildly uncomfortable on kai's end, but rudy seems unruffled.

'have you and jo come to an agreement about the papers?' he asks and kai has to bite back his scowl.

because kai had showed up out of nowhere with a past that wasn't something anyone wanted to step into, rudy had pulled some strings in order to construct an identity and a past for his daughter's soulmate, payment for kai's endeavors to bring the girl out of her coma. apparently, he was a child jo had nearly twenty years ago and put up for adoption before moving to mystic falls. kai had a brand new social security number now and birthday - the night he escaped the ether - now.

the construction of the new identity was pretty solid, with an adoption agency, foster families, schools with grades and attendance records and everything. there were social media accounts several 'years' old that belonged to him. he even got to keep his name, having been named after his late 'uncle' before entering the system. all jo needed to do was sign off on the birth certificate and adoption agency forms from the past and kai went from being her twin to being her 19-year-old son.

kai's not sure how he feels about being aged-down. part of him is elated, because to the whole world, there wouldn't really be anything to keep him away from bonnie. but it also makes everything he's been through up until this point tremulous. nothing more than a fucking nightmare according to official records.

being in the ether might have been the most horrific experience of kai's life, but at least it brought him to bonnie. he thinks he'd suffer it all over again for that.

'she's still thinking it over,' kai answers.

rudy frowns, but says nothing. he's aware of kai's past, jo and alaric having made it abundantly clear, but rudy was a man who came to his own conclusions. after spending time with kai, hearing his version of the past sixteen years and observing the witch's dedication to bonnie, he's decided to give him a chance.

and he was pushing jo to do the same, something which drove a wedge between the two friends. kai doubts anything will fix the broken ties between his sister and himself.

changing the subject, rudy asks kai about his ventures into the mind of one bonnie bennett and kai goes into detail about the beach she dreamt up, building sandcastles, and the points of their conversation that had kai convinced she would likely be waking up soon, so long as he continued to play the guide and show her the way out and she was willing to follow.

the older man listens eagerly, looking both excited and sad to hear what kai had to say. when the siphon goes silent, he speaks up again.

'i have something for you.' reaching into his back pocket, rudy pulls out a small black box and hands it over to kai, who raises his bows in question. flipping it open, the young man is given pause.

the ring is gorgeous. a princess cut green opal sits queenly amid a cluster of small, white diamonds, all shimmering softly under the kitchen light. the opal itself is iridescent, glinting the rainbow across kai's pupil. they're all held together by a twist of gold that reminds kai of roses.

'um,' he looks up at rudy with wide eyes, shaking his head. 'i can't - um. i uh. fuck dude,' he stutters bluntly.

rudy snorts at the profanity and holds up his hand in the universal stop when kai tries to give it back.

'keep it, i'm sure you'll find some use for it. it used to be sheila's and bonnie was always enamored with it.'

something in kai's throat feels heavy and he has to swallow the lump.

'i can't pay you back for this,' he confesses.

'you don't have to,' rudy replies. when kai continues to look shellshocked, he sighs and continues. 'i know your past is less than savory, but considering the nature of your punishment as well as your current demeanor, i think i've come to accept that the universe might have paired you and bonnie for a reason. so do right by her. take this kindness and give it back to her.'

whatever thrums through kai at rudy's words is unfamiliar and painful. it makes his chest tight and some impossible to swallow lump linger in his throat.

but he thinks the sensation is apt in the face of hearing, for the first time in his life, that someone truly believed in him.

he nods, accepting the task. 'i will,' he replies, pocketing the box and the treasure inside it. rudy nods back and goes back to his food.

their silence is a companionable one.

* * *

he'd already told jo and the rest of mystic falls' motley crew of moronic misfits where to shove it a few nights ago when they asked him to meet them at the boarding house. they were planning to go after someone named silas and wanted him to predict the outcomes of their current plans. none of them were good and kai told them as much, warning them to not proceed. but they insisted, so just to get the fuck away from the lot of morons, he pointed at a picture of someone they called stefan (who wasn't even there) and told them to look out for someone who looked like that. and to practice their mental defenses if the ancient liked to play mind games like they said, because even for an untrained empath like kai (didn't matter that he was just naturally good at everything), they were too easy to read.

in private, he told jo not to do anything stupid. she was too out of practice with magic and, quite frankly, not witch enough to do big spells on her own anymore. she told him fucking die. he blew her a kiss and wished her the same.

but when he wakes up monday morning, it's to a dread weighing down his chest. kai texts rudy to check in and after a moment, sends his sister a query on her well-being too.

kai keeps himself busy with little tasks: he changes the door knobs, spruces up the crown molding with some small repairs and paint, waxes the hardwood downstairs. he checks his phone. there aren't any new messages.

mondays were shit. kai was banished on a monday. today's a monday and he is certain some bullshit was about to go down. he could feel it in his gut. grabbing his keys, he calls rudy to see if he was home. there's not an answer, but then he was probably at the city council building doing mayorly things. it was early afternoon on a monday, most people do things like go to work.

tapping his foot, kai nibbles at his lip and calls jo. no answer there either. maybe she was at the hospital? or maybe she was off doing something stupid that he warned her not to do. kai stops himself when he notices he's punching in the numbers to alaric's cell phone - santa's workshop would be in hell before kai stooped to such levels of desperation.

this is ridiculous, he berates himself. stop being stupid. he already has his keys in his pocket, so he grabs a banana and leaves, opting to bike around and burn some nervous energy.

it's a nice day - the sun is bright. the birds were chirping. the neighbors were smiling and cheery.

it was all bullshit. kai couldn't shake the feeling that something sinister was riding the wind. he feels like jim carrey in the truman show - things seemed perfect, but there was something _off_ about it all.

in times square, he notices that people have conglomerated around a raised staged, so he rides over.

'what's going on?' he asks a woman walking past.

'oh, you're new,' she smiles at him. 'it's the end of summer block party.'

she walks off, and after a moment's contemplation, he chains up his bike and follows her general direction. he feels stupid, standing around with a bunch of strangers under a sun determined to bake him into a souffle, but then rudy takes the stage, capturing kai's attention.

rudy takes to the microphone, politely asking for everyone's attention before he begins to speak.

'i hope all of you are enjoying yourselves,' he utters. 'i think it's such great thing that our town has an end of summer tradition that brings us all together. where neighbors become friends and friends become family. my daughter, she usually has an end of summer tradition herself, one that typically ends with an upset stomach from overindulging on mrs. carter's candied apples.'

there's a few chuckles at this, including kai's own. someone pats mrs. carter, who is standing by said candied apple cart, on the back.

'and the thing about family traditions is th-,' rudy stops speaking as someone - stefan salvatore? - gets on stage with him.

'mind if i say a few words?' stefan says. kai frowns. that guy...he looks like the vampire but something about him feels off. his thoughts are too fuzzy and hard to read and his entire demeanor was just wrong. rudy tries to dissuade the rude interloper, but the man says something to him and rudy steps back. kai recognizes the signs of compulsion immediately.

the prickling feeling from before, that feeling that something sinister was coming, returns to kai tenfold and he starts to push his way forward to the stage.

'you're probably wondering how i did that,' stefan-not-stefan says. 'it's a pretty basic form of mind control.'

images flicker through kai's mind: a frozen crowd, human mannequins watching on as stefan took a knife and pulled it across rudy's throat. the command for the mass of people to beat each other to death.

'no,' kai mutters. 'don't.' he becomes more desperate as he pushes his way through the crowd. people murmur their dissent as he comes by. a few people push him back. stefan drowns on in the background.

'now usually i wouldn't rely on such crass methods of getting what i want, but when a belligerent and conceited group of fools insist,' his voice grows louder, into a venomous hiss. 'on denying you access to the things you need, well - shut the fuck up. don't move a muscle.'

the crowd goes quiet. kai, trying to avoid compulsion, looks down at the ground as he walks. that's not fucking stefan, he thinks. i need magic. i need to get to them before he kills rudy.

'now,' silas, kai's sure, says. 'that rude young man in the powerpuff girls shirt? bring him up here to me. i want his full attention.'

kai's eyes widen right before two large men grip his arms, accelerating his progress towards the stage as they hoist him up. another man comes up behind him to grab his head, directing it to silas who smiles.

'hello, malachai,' he greets. the usage of his full name leaves kai perturbed and it dawns on him that the other man must be like him - an empath.

'winner, winner, chicken dinner! we are indeed of the same ilk, you and i.' silas steps forward, pulling rudy with him. kai hadn't predicted this particular outcome, but if this has changed, then maybe he could save rudy from the fate he'd seen.

'now you seem like a reasonable young man, but your friends,' silas tsks. 'they need some help. i'm amazed bonnie let those fools make a move without her.'

'they're not my friends,' kai corrects. 'so you don't need to hurt him to convince me to do anything to them.' he tramples back any thoughts he has on bonnie so that the stronger empath can't garner any information. silas shrugs.

'i don't care. you seem to know them and since they won't listen me, maybe they'll listen to you.'

silas directs rudy between them and kai shakes his head, pleading.

'no. please, don't hurt him.' silas sighs.

'it's nothing personal. but i need you tell bonnie and her little group of friends that if they don't bring me katherine pierce,' the glide of the blade across rudy's neck is so swift kai has no time to even think to struggle before the mayor's blood - rudy's blood, _bonnie's_ blood, his soulmate's blood, oh god - was spraying across kai's face and the grinning faces of blossom, bubbles, and buttercup stretched across his chest.

' _ **no!**_ '

the word rips out of kai's chest and somehow, he pulls himself free of the burly townsmen as rudy falls forward onto him. blood is welling up from the wound and kai grips at the older man's neck, trying to staunch the flow as he lays him in his back. horror fills him. this isn't real. it can't be.

silas' hand settles on top of kai's head. it feels wet, rudy's blood having jettisoned out fast enough to drench it despite the quickness of the cut. the immortal witch wipes his hand clean on the side of kai's face, who is frozen with disbelief and grief over someone he had come to consider important. the hand trails down, cupping kai's chin and tilting his head up.

'tell your friends that if they don't bring me katherine pierce and stop fucking around with me, then mayor hopkins will be the first of all of them,' his hand leaves kai's chin to indicate the crowd.

'have a good day, malachai,' silas says. then he's gone, leaving kai to his horror and his grief and his hate.

pandemonium ensues in the wake of his departure.

* * *

 _at the hospital, kai forgoes any examinations in order to stay near bonnie. he gets aggressive when a nurse tries to redirect him to see a doctor, and the staff leave him alone after that except to update him on bonnie's condition and to let him know he can go sit with her. no one says anything about his bloody appearance or out of date attire, but he catches the odd phrase about soulmates and concern. he tells them to get into contact with rudy hopkins, her father, and doesn't question the recognition that lights their faces._

 _small towns._

 _sometime later, jo comes barrelling into the room, snapping kai out of his meditation of bonnie. she freezes upon seeing him and he tenses up. rage wells up, hotter than he expects, and far too consuming. before he knows it, he's somehow across the room, a fistful of his twin's dark hair used to guide her face first into the wall. he slams her again and again, until the wall is marked red, before he grips her throat and squeezes as hard as his strength allows. the shouts of the floor monitors and security trying to pull him off don't register in quest to obliterate the bitch who ruined his life._

 _kai blinks himself aware. he's alone, aside from his comatose companion. his brow furrows and it's then that jo does enter room in a flurry._

 _she does freeze at the sight of him and he does tense up. but he grips the arms of the flimsy chair he's parked himself in until they creak in protest. he turns away from her as the predicted swell of fury tidal waves him._

 _no. not today. he can't afford to be separated from bonnie._

' _it's you? how?,' jo breathes. 'are you the soulma-,' she bites back the rest of the sentence. kai frowns at her in confusion._

' _what the fuck are you on?' he snaps. 'where's her father?'_

 _his twin pulls herself together, an aloof, professional expression overtaking her face. 'mayor hopkins is out of town, he asked me to check in on her. now that i have, i think things are worse for bonnie than we originally thought,' jo answers coldly._

 _kai sneers. 'whatever. just do your job, dr. saltzman.' the siphon takes a deep satisfaction from his twin's stricken face at his unexpected knowledge. opting to ignore her as she checks over the one person they both love, kai once again focuses on the traces of bonnie that he can sense and tries to guide her back through the dark. he's the light, kai thinks, and she's a butterfly._

 _together, they are smoke and ash and brittle bones. for the first time, kai realizes how breakable, how_ insubstantial _those things are._

* * *

kai's beyond furious by the time jo opens the fucking door to her house and he shoves her out of the way to enter. his shirt is stiff from rudy's now long dried blood and the only thing reverberating through kai's head is that he has to go to bonnie. to be with her and protect her now that there is yet another black hole sized vacuum in her life. he has to tell her what happened.

but first he has to kill his fucking sister, who's smacking him on the chest.

'are you listening to me?' she snarls. 'what the hell happened to you?' kai sneers back at her.

'jo,' his voice is low and dangerous. he grabs her face in a bruising hold, pulls her forward until they're nearly kissing. 'what did you do? what did you and those fucking idiots do?'

'what are you talking about?' jo counters. she pulls herself out of his grasp. 'why are you covered in blood? what did you do?'

' _what did you do to silas?_ ' kai snarls, ignoring her question. he needs to know. he has no time for her platitudes. jo's confusion is overriding her anger and her voice is her doctor voice when she addresses him again, trying to soothe him.

'kai, what happened? talk to me.' he shakes his head at her and runs a hand through his hair agitatedly. kai paces before her, his thoughts racing. he grips his face. he squats down, then springs back up, pacing around again, before he turns his back to her, pinching the bridge of his nose.

'kai?' jo's gotten over her trepidation enough to reach for him. her fingers barely brush his back before he pulls away.

'you know what? fuck you. i don't care what you did. this was a waste of time.'

jo grabs his arm and swings him around to face her. kai yanks the limb away. it burns where she touches him.

'tell me what happened,' she demands and kai glares at her, loathing how much she looks like him. his perfect twin, ever the golden child, the angel to his devil. kai wants to choke her with that tainted fucking halo, wants to cover in the same filth he's always swelled, show the world that she's not so fucking perfect. that she's just as twisted as him, no matter how she hides it. he leans into her face.

'silas told me to tell you that if you don't hand over katherine pierce and stop fucking around on him, then mayor hopkins is only the first person he'll do this to,' kai growls at her, indicating his bloodied form. jo's gaze gets caught on the reddened faces of the wide-eyed cartoon girls he sports.

'silas killed rudy?' she whispers. kai drops his arms. he has to get away. being around jo makes him unhinged.

'i need to leave. i need to go see bonnie.' this snaps jo out of her reverie and she becomes a nuisance again.

'you don't need to be anywhere near her,' she snaps, sparking kai's temper once more.

'me? you did this!' he gestures at the blood covering him. 'rudy's dead because you pissed off the ancient immortal witch, jo. you asked me to predict for you and i did and you fucking did what i told you not to anyway.'

'you were the one berating me for not doing anything! now you're changing your tune?'

'before, josette! when bonnie was facing off against these freaks by herself! _you're_ the adult here, this should have been your problem long before things got to this point,' he turns away from her. looking at her face made him sick. 'i'm going to see bonnie.'

his twin grabs at him. 'leave her alone!' kai flings her off.

'what, are you going to fight laws older than our freaking parents? bonnie's in a freaking coma and doesn't have any guardians. soulmates have claim to their partners if one of them is medically inviable for decision making.'

'not it you don't exist you can't,' she answers venomously. the implications have kai seeing red, but before he can reply, she continues. 'i have no idea how you poisoned rudy these past few months, but you can't fool me, kai. i _know_ you.'

'you know shit!' kai spits back at her. 'you have no idea who i am anymore, you toxic freaking bitch!'

he comes forward and she steps away, fear flickering across her face. the reaction makes kai chuckle. not because he relishes the power of bringing her terror, but because she is building his argument for him - she doesn't know him at all anymore.

'do you want to know what it's like,' he murmurs. 'to be banished to the ether? because no one ever knew what it was like really, but they were so, so quick to send people there.'

'i don't c-'

'listen to me!' he shouts. she's going to hear him, for _once_ , she's going to be the one to garner the repercussions of someone else's selfishness.

'the ether isn't some stasis or some black hole you get lost in. it's home, jo. it's being amongst your family and friends and going unnoticed. it's never being able to change or grow along with world. it's being unable to touch anything with a pulse and watching people forget you, watching your twin build herself a brand new life over your goddamn grave.'

jo flinches at the sharp monologue, her face softening as she hears him out.

'i know - i wasn't the best person. i was twisted and fucked up - i still am. you were always the golden one, you didn't know what it was like being the defective twin, the black sheep, the unwanted one. but i'd like to live, jo, because i didn't get to do a whole lot of that before you all decided i wasn't worth it.'

his sister swallows. blue eyes, so like his own search his face.

'kai, i - i didn't know.'

'so that makes it okay? i spent over a decade of my life as a freaking ghost, jo, because _you_ put me in the ether. it was _your_ magic that sealed the spell. you can't absolve yourself of that guilt just because you didn't know.'

'you _killed_ our younger siblings, kai!'

'you planned to banish me before that night,' his voice is eerie calm when he states it, but kai has long gone numb to the truth. jo's guilty face is all the confirmation he needs to know that he guessed right.

'i'm an empath jo, you really think i wouldn't have been able to put it together? the way you avoided me so i couldn't overhear your thoughts? your secret little meetings with our beloved coven leader? the way you already had the spell memorized, the way everyone gathered up so quickly to banish me?

'it wasn't lucas and olivia that set me off that night, jo. it was you.'

tears have gathered in her eyes by now, years of pent up guilt and self-loathing manifested. she reaches out for him, but kai side-steps her. he closes his eyes against the sounds of her crying.

he loved jo. he had loved her so much that once upon a time he had wanted nothing more than to be a part of her, one with her, until his death.

and then she took his love and spat on it, showed kai how alone he really was. he won't let her do that to him ever again.

'i want to be with my soulmate,' he sighs. he's tired of being near her. 'i need to see her, tell her what happened. try to convince her to wake up. you're wasting my time.'

'i'll sign the papers.' at her unexpected admittance, kai's eyes fly open.

'what?'

'i'll sign them. you can be my son or whatever. i won't try to stop you from being with bonnie anymore.'

it seems too good to be true, that jo, the biggest advocate of all things anti-kai would suddenly deflate on her stance.

'just like that?'

'just like that.'

'but why?'

'because you seem different. you actually care.'

kai's eyes go wide. 'wow, i care about my soulmate. imagine that.'

'shut up,' she snaps. the good doctor rubs her arms, before keeping them crossed under her chest. 'sometime ago, i got pregnant. i didn't keep it.'

kai stays quiet. if she can't put together the implications of what he just confessed to her absolutely shitty luck as a resident, then he wasn't going to enlighten her.

'i took your life away and i took theirs too, because i wanted to be free. seeing how you are now - the least i can do is give it back. so i'll sign over everything i need to and hand it over.'

eyeing her coldly he nods. 'make sure to use your maiden name,' he instructs. 'i would hate to be a saltzman.'

* * *

when bonnie finally comes back to him, she's a sobbing mass, agony wracking her small frame. kai blinks out of his trance and moves to sit on the bed with her. she falls on him, her tears soaking through his clean shirt in seconds. the idea of wearing a tee full of snot so shortly after wearing one full of blood makes him grimace, but he holds her anyway, offering his comfort as her heart breaks in mourning.

it turns out that grief and anger were all the impetus that she needed to break free of the chains keeping her locked in her magic-induced coma. had kai known, he might've tricked her into coming back some time before. but not like this.

never like this.

she has no family anymore: abby, sheila, and rudy are all gone, victims to the curse of the supernatural. her arms wound around him like a snake, clenching down just as tight. he squeezes her back.

i'm here, he thinks. i'm here. i won't leave you.

she's not an empath like him, but he thinks it as loud as he can anyway. he's not going anywhere, not unless she sends him away, and even then, kai doubts he could do it. she's in him, a part of him, more central to his being than even his heart or his brain. there's no kai without bonnie. the last time he tried to exist without her, he went crazy and murdered half his family.

so he holds her tight and let's her cry out her pain.

* * *

her lips are hard on his and it's nothing like what he expected their first real kiss to be. it's too raw, too heated with outside emotions that have nothing to do with the bond between them and everything to do with the hate simmering just beneath her skin. kai doesn't think he could even imagine bonnie harboring this kind of visceral fury before he went deep. it reminds kai of the rage he felt the night half his family died.

the idea of bonnie carrying something like that is enough to almost scare kai.

he doesn't kiss her back. he just let's her take what she needs from him until she realizes that he's not responding. bonnie steps back from him.

she looks so put together in her black dress, nothing to hint at the fact that she was _thisclose_ to falling apart at the seams. her already petite frame has been whittled down even more by atrophy, but her eyes are bright and alert. anger too big to be housed in her frame has sharpened her.

rudy's funeral has had a large turn out, nearly the whole town showing up to pay respects to the third mayor the town has lost in two years. kai feels more than a little uncomfortable, surrounded by so many people, but he looks fucking good, though somber, in his suit. just like the soulmate of the late mayor's beloved daughter should. many of the small town bumpkins found it to be a tale of romantic fate that the long lost son of the bennett-hopkins' family friend was the one destined for bonnie.

jo's kept her word, even corroborated his story of a the poor foster kid seeking out his birth mother. ugh. the very idea of being anywhere near his sister's vagina gives him shivers.

his little witchling peers up at him when she pulls away, something like hurt reflected in her gaze, so kai slips a comforting arm around her waist. he's never been one to care for social norms - he had laughed rather hard at his own mother's funeral - but something about making out in front of a bunch of mourners seems a bit tactless, even for kai. still, he doesn't want bonnie to feel rejected so he latches onto her and begins to talk shit about the other funeral goers.

they all come up to her to pay their respects - aka, trying to seek gossip.

('oh, poor dear,' one older woman titters. 'such a shame you had to come out of your coma when something like this happens. if you ever need to talk, honey, i'll always have time for you.'

'that's so kind of you ma'am,' kai answers with a charming smile when bonnie's fist clenches on his jacket. 'that's okay, though, that's what i'm here for.'

they usher her along and once she's out of earshot, kai calls her a nosy old cunt. bonnie's answering snort is enough to have him keep up his snarky diatribes. he can feel her mood lightening, black humor at a funeral seemingly the key to keep her distracted.)

her friends try to get close to her, but bonnie virtually ignores them. he knows a part of her blames their recklessness for provoking silas and leading him to kill rudy the way that he did. he knows because he feels the same way, having outright spit at the group that he thought they were a bunch of fucking idiots and that it was a bad idea.

but whatever. apparently voicing your opinion when you had the stigma of 'psychotic killer' attached to you was only viable if your name was dante or damian or whatever the annoying, crazy-eyed vampire was called.

during the wake, he leaves bonnie for about five seconds to get her a bottle of water, but it's long enough for _them_ to swoop in on her like a pack of vultures.

the vampire that pisses him off is towering over her, far too close for kai's liking, trying to get her to update him on what she plans to do about silas, while elena and caroline plead with bonnie to just _talk_ to them, please.

his witchling looks on the break of shutting down, her emotions blazing up and dying like solar flares. it's not the time or the place for her people to be acting like such twats, but it seems none of them have much social awareness outside their own immediate needs. thumbing at the ring on his forefinger that bonnie gave him as a magic reserve, he siphons just enough to shock them all with small aneurysms.

they jump, looking at her in a varying forms of shock and hurt and anger, but kai speaks up right behind them.

'like a bunch of hyenas, aren't you?'

they all turn to face him in unison and kai cocks a brow at them. he's not really concerned with them though, more focused on making sure the girl behind them is alright. she's too blank for someone who was just in as good a mood as one can be in when at their father's funeral. it was like the lot of them weren't good for anything except unraveling his hard work.

fucking leeches in every sense.

'oh look, lover-boy's here,' the other man drawls. he keeps talking, his voice a droning earworm. the vampires are too fixated on him, but kai, alarmed, pushes past the trio.

'shut up, davis,' he snaps, grabbing bonnie's shoulders just as she folds over on herself. he follows her, to the ground, murmuring soft nothings. she's hyperventilating, her mind a swirl of 'my fault' and 'should've been there'.

'it's not your fault,' he comforts. 'silas did this.' kai wants to place the blame on the fools standing before them as well, but he doesn't want to alienate her from them any further. despite his own dislike and her current anger, she cares for these people.

'bonnie,' elena murmurs. she reaches down for her friend, but bonnie jerks away from them both.

'leave me alone,' her voice is cold and her face is blank. neither match the negativity swirling like lava in her mind. 'i hate you.'

elena blinks. 'i - bonnie, wha-?'

'this is because of you,' the witch snarls. kai covertly tries to reach for her, but she pulls herself back. 'i'm a reminder of everything bad that's ever happened to you, right?'

elena shakes her head. 'no bonnie, i had my humanity off, i didn't mean it.'

'bonnie, please,' the blonde interjects. she looks like she's about to cry.

his girl feels numb to everything. she's beyond the point of any reach. 'i mean it. i hate you. all of this,' she indicates the wake. 'is because of you. i lost my entire family - because of you.

'just leave me alone.'

she storms off after that. darren tries to reach for her, but kai sends another zap his way that has the vampire shifting his attention towards the siphon, who smiles not-so-nicely. the raven-haired leech sneers.

'funny thing,' he states. 'how bon-bon wakes up and she's so conveniently saying the same ridiculous shit as you.'

kai shrugs, standing up. 'the truth must really sting when it can't be twisted in your favor.'

d'angelo is in front of kai in a second, the vampire's hand is around the siphon's throat, but his mounting anger left his thoughts wide open for kai, who is siphoning the necromancy out of him the moment their skins meet. the leech lets him go immediately, his arms veiny and ashy grey where kai had drained him. kai is feeling generous though and gives the magic back to him.

dropping to his knees, darrius grabs his head with a grimace. blood starts to drip out of his nose and ears from the brain hemorrhage kai's causing.

'let her be,' kai tells him. elena's distress is annoying him, so he sighs heavily and turns to her.

'just give her space. she's hurting and the lot of you hemming and hawing after her is probably overwhelming.'

she glares at him. 'i _know_. she's my best friend, of course, i know.'

whatever. her self-pity isn't really his concern. patting caroline on the back - she was at least tolerable, with the way she took responsibility for her own fuck-ups - kai went to go find his soulmate.

it really was intolerable to him when she was hurting.

* * *

 _rudy moves bonnie out of the hospital into a home care service. when abby had fallen into a similar state, she'd stayed in her coma for years, weakening until she was essentially brain dead. abby, the super milf, had died in a hospital. rudy refuses to allow bonnie to suffer a similar state._

 _he dodges kai for about a week, but the siphon's insistence that he had an idea of how to pull bonnie back into the world of the the living proves too enticing for the desperate single father._

 _so kai goes over to the mayor's home when the man finally concedes. as rudy leads him to bonnie's room, he asks the siphon where he'd been staying the past few days. kai admits to breaking into sheila's old home and staying there._

 _rudy gets quiet at this and after a moment, he tells kai that he'll get him a spare key and let him stay there so long as kai does repairs and home care. grateful, kai easily agrees._

 _bonnie's so still in her bed when they enter her room, it's unsettling. kai has to steel himself when he sees her, the sight of her unconscious, unmoving body causing something in kai to wail. the sight isn't something that should ever exist._

 _he brings a chair over and takes her hand. rudy goes to stand in the corner, overseeing the venture._

 _ignoring him, kai closes his eyes and focuses on the sleeping beauty. he's the prince, he thinks, come to save her from the evil curse. she feels fainter than she had the last time kai had been with her, unable to find her way back without the laserpoint of kai's empathy showing the way. clutching her hand tight, kai feels the magic of the soulbond thrum to life at the contact. drawing from that, he opens up his mind, casts out a line and follows it into the cavernous depths of his soulmate's mind._

 _it's pitch black all over, shadows everywhere. there's far too much similarity to the beginning of kai's sentence in the ether and he frowns. he doesn't want bonnie anywhere in this, not when she had always been a person made of light and bubbly good._

 _the sensation is like swimming in tar. he wonders if this is how ancient beasts felt falling into such pits, when the sludge coated their bodies and their insides like a disease._

 _the time ticks by as kai searches and it's not until he gets a flicker of a phantom sensation at this throat and the echo of a scream reverberates around him that kai is able to actually follow anything. he lets himself into the memory, a dark-haired vampire at bonnie's throat as she leaves the trance of possession to find herself attacked. her scream echoes again and she falls when the vampire is pushed off of her, before the memory replays._

 _kai notes to himself that he needs to pay the bloodsucker back for that one before he catches the recollected bonnie as she falls._

 _the contact brings him to bonnie as she faces off against another vampire. he is seeping with power, almost like the kind he felt the night abby went into her coma. but so is bonnie as she attacks him, wind raging around her as she brings him to knees, voice deep and commanding through her chants. kai stands in awe before the replay; a part of him is aroused._

 _magic is such a fucking turn-on._

 _bonnie's hand begins to lower as the ancient leech before her is splayed on the ground. surging forward, kai grips the descending hand and gets pulled to the next memory._

 _this time, it's bonnie rushing from her school, ripping off a plastic tiara and sash that has 'prom queen' emblazoned across it as she walks. her heels click on the pavement of the parking, sounding almost as anxious as she looks. she pauses and seems to talk to someone kai can't see. cars suddenly go off and then she's screaming 'get out of my head!'_

 _the cars all shut off and she looks around, wide-eyed and scared before_ another fucking vampire _is at her neck. but this vampire chokes on bonnie's blood and steps away, revealing herself to be elena. as the undead blood vacuum continues to choke, the wound on bonnie's neck heals and a look of utter cold rage fills her face. it's so queenly and hot. she rises from where she was pushed down and turns to face her friend. with a simple twist of her hand, something in elena snaps and the brunette screams. kai has to wonder why vampires always think they're the top tier predator when witches exist._

 _the memory starts to replay and as bonnie rushes out of the school, kai steps in front of her, wrapping the recollection into an embrace when she walks into him._

 _he's back in the cave and this time he recognizes the setting. turning, kai finds bonnie behind him, eyes closed, black veins spreading over her body as she chants that stupid fucking spell._

 _kai can't relive this, he refuses. so he goes up to bonnie and cups her face and to his surprise, he's not transported to another memory._

 _instead, bonnie's chanting dies down. her eyes open and settle on him._

' _kai?' she asks._

* * *

kai watches the way bonnie's hand shakes as she presses the knife against silas' neck. the ancient witch's true face is the same as stefan salvatore, who was found with severe ptsd and turned out to be a shadow self of the man. but there's none of the kindness or sympathy bonnie says stefan has on silas' face when he grins up at bonnie. the siphon is sure the more powerful empath can taste bonnie's trepidation and hate and worry more potently than even kai, who's distracted by the sick feeling garnered by all the magic he just took from the now killable being.

the once immortal presses his throat harder against the blade.

'go on,' he urges. 'it'll make you feel better.'

trapping silas had been a harrowing endeavor - the abundant research, the amount of mind games they had to play, hiding careful planning behind unpredictable thoughts and sending the scooby gang off on a wild goose chase - had all culminated in kai getting close enough to eat his way through silas' magic and immortality. now he feels like a full tick, bloated and sleepy and sick. but silas is on his knees before bonnie, who looks like an avenging goddess in the face of the ancient witch's impertinence. kai knows she's hiding her thoughts behind her pain and hate. silas thinks he's won, but he hasn't. between them, silas might have been the stronger empath, but kai's been practicing a lot lately and he's sure he's now the more skilled.

kai knows what awaits silas isn't as peaceful as the death the immortal has been seeking.

silas smiles against bonnie's stony silence and kai's silent observation. 'you know, i never thought to have the immortality spell just sucked out of me. siphons, was it?' he addresses kai, who nods hesitantly. he's still nervous from the last time he was around silas. 'your kind didn't exist when i was last walking around. i wonder what abhorrence of nature made you.'

bonnie pushes against the knife. a trickle of blood creeps down silas' adam's apple and his attention shifts back to her.

'come on,' he begs her. 'be a good girl. avenge your father. kill me.'

the knife trembles before bonnie is pulling it away, hilting it into the curve of a meaty deltoid instead. silas grunts, then shouts when she rips it out. bonnie steps back from the ancient witch and tosses the knife on the ground before kai, who scoops it up.

'death is for lovers, isn't it?' she asks. her voice is so dead. 'but amara isn't dead.'

silas' smirk dies as he listens to her speak. 'i reversed the spell that made her the anchor,' bonnie continues. 'she's not dead, but she's going to be soon. rapid onset aging and all that.'

face morphing with rage, silas reaches for bonnie, but kai halts him with the magic from the immortality spell. a rock cracks - too much magic that he can't control is leaking out of the siphon.

'what the hell did you do?' the ancient grits out. bonnie shakes her head.

'i gave her what she wanted. i thought about doing to her what you did to my dad, but she just seemed so tired and sad i couldn't.' silas relaxes to the news that his soulmate wasn't the recipient of any ill will, but then bonnie's face hardens.

'see that's the thing though,' she continues. 'i lifted the spell, but all that energy has to go somewhere.'

she squats before silas, scorching symbols in the hard earth before him. the older witch struggles to break free when he realizes what she's drawing.

'and you, you weren't so nice to me when you were trying to get what you wanted,' she smiles bitterly. 'jo taught me a pretty powerful banishment curse. i don't have a coven to help me, but i have a focal point.' she points indicates the scorch marks. 'and i have my soulmate, who has your magic and the magic from your immortality spell.'

the face so like stefan's is twisted with hate as he looks from bonnie to kai.

'amara is going to pass any second now. and i'm going to banish you so far into the depths of the ether it's going to make you wish you were a petrified rock again. there's not going to be a soulbond that can break you out. just you, silas. in your own little world.'

the bennett finishes burning the concentration points into the ground and rises.

'fuck you, silas. you're not getting what you want from me.'

giving her his hand, kai begins to chant the words of the banishment curse that was both the best and worst thing that ever happened to him. bonnie's soft alto joins his, their voices twining around them in unison. the vocalized spellcasting gives direction to the magic leaking out of kai, building it into a shape and a function that gives the siphon shivers. kai has to close his eyes against the sounds of silas' shouts - he can sympathize with the other man, he really can. going to the ether isn't a fate he would wish on just anyone.

but silas hurt bonnie. all the sympathy kai can muster won't garner the other empath any mercy from kai.

but he can relate he thinks, opening his eyes. silas isn't anywhere to be seen, but kai knows that means very little when dealing with the ether. he can feel the blowback energy from amara's curse cackling around them as bonnie manipulates it into a seal for silas' banishment. soon the curse settles and their chanting dies down. bonnie's grip on his hand is warm. the magic from their soulbond is humming between them like a livewire; his chest thrums.

he can relate to silas. if it had been bonnie and him in place of the ancient couple, kai thinks he would have burned the world down just to breathe her air again.

* * *

 _their destination looks like the library from beauty and the beast, kai thinks as he looks around. it probably is. bonnie used to waste hours watching the movie over and over again when she was a little girl._

 _the witchling herself is sitting comfortable in a large overstuffed arm chair. she's reading 'peter pan' and kai comes up behind her, reading over her shoulder._

'"you know that place between sleep and wake, that place where you can still remember dreaming?"' _kai quotes. '"_ that's where i'll always love you. that's where i'll be waiting." _aw, pumpkin.'_

 _the younger witch snaps the book shut with a heavy sigh._

' _can't enjoy anything without you ruining it, can i?' she teases. her smile is soft and her eyes are light and kai can't help but to grin back. she seems so at ease with him now, after the beach, after all their talks, after all the time spent just getting to know each other. bonnie is growing stronger - any day now, she'll have mustered up the strength to follow kai out of the trappings of her mind._

 _his smile falters as he thinks of what she'll return to. he only wanted to see her, to reassure her that no matter what she finds in the waking world, kai would be a constant thing. but she catches his falling mood and demands an answer. her eyes are a weapon. he can't deny her a thing._

 _kai tells her about rudy._

* * *

kai takes bonnie camping.

she needs the reprieve, after everything with silas and her little fight with her friends. her moroseness was starting to become alarming to both him and jo, and kai knows the moment he starts agreeing with his twin-turned-'mother' that something needs to be done. so kai kidnaps his girl to be healed by nature. a witch needs to be reconnected to their roots every so often, lest they start to lose touch with themselves. already bonnie's magic has begun stutter in her grief and anger.

bonnie had been pissy with him throughout the drive to the state park, but not even halfway through their trek from the lot to a private camping grounds in hungry mother, she seems to cheer up. she's walking faster at least, taking in the scenario around her and stopping every now and then to take a picture. kai waits patiently up the trail, happy as long as she is.

when they finally reach the campground, bonnie gasps in delight. kai had opted for a tent-only area not far from the lake, spelling the camp director to mark the area as full and move out any other visitors so that he and bonnie can be alone. bonnie runs towards the edge of the lake, camera at ready, while her soulmate drops down their gear. kai has to admit, the view is beautiful and siphoning a bit of magic from his ring, he whispers a small barrier spell to keep away unwanted visitors.

his little magic battery reminds him of another ring, one that sits heavy in his backpack. after setting the tent and bags and mattress padding out of the way (kai's a princess, but whatever. he's grown sensitive to touch over the past few years.), he squats down and checks on the ring that rudy gave him all those weeks ago. the aged gold still shimmers beautifully, the green opal and diamonds around it still sparkle nicely and kai still can't get the picture of it resting on bonnie's hand out of his.

he snaps the box shut and slips in his pocket when he sees bonnie head towards him, a smile illuminating her face. he can't help but grin back.

'can i help?' she asks as kai stands back up. with a nod, he instructs her through pitching the tent, old practices of being the eldest sibling during similar ventures coming back to him. in no time, they have the tent up, a nest of bedding inside, with the rest of their shit settled outside. they even build fire pit, although they don't light it yet and bonnie eyes their hard work with a smile.

'what?' kai asks. she shakes her head.

'nothing,' bonnie replies. 'it's just - we did that without magic. it's been awhile since i've been able to appreciate anything i've accomplished without magic.'

kai nods along as he listens, absorbing the strokes of sadness emanating from her. when he gets back, he's going to kill all her friends. he has yet to decide if he means that literally or figuratively.

'i used to think abby was hot,' he muses aloud, distracting her. bonnie looks at him in bewilderment while kai eyes her up and down lecherously. 'maybe i still do. you look a lot like her.'

bonnie screeches outlandishly and throws a bag of large marshmallows at him. he catches it and opens it up. grabbing a fistful, he chases after bonnie around the terrain. she's quick, darting around in fast little dashes fueled half by exhilaration and half by fear. when he catches her, a twisted game of chubby bunny is played with him shoving the fat marshmallows in her mouth until she shakes her head pleadingly for him to stop. kai sucks one out of her mouth and eats it, chortling at bonnie's frown of disgust. he shrugs.

'what? don't waste them,' he scolds and bonnie shoves him away. kai eats one of the leftovers he has in his hand.

she looks cute, chewing up the marshmallows, cheeks all puffed out as she heads toward the lake. kai follows after and they end splashing barefoot along the shore, kicking water at each other and soaking their clothes until bonnie wants to go hiking for pictures. they change and head out.

it's a weird time of year, the interim between summer and fall. the sunlight falls heavy on them even as a stiff cool breeze rattles them. bonnie takes his hand in hers as they traverse the trails only letting go to snap photos of any flora and fauna that captures her attention. kai is only captivated by her, by the peaceful contentment she radiates for the first time since he left the ether.

bonnie's face is tilted up, camera following a v of ducks gliding through the sky as she rotates toward him, when she notices his preoccupation. she lowers the camera, her attention on his.

'what are you looking at?' her voice breaks the tremulous hush. kai just shakes his head with a soft smile and softer eyes.

'just thinking,' he answers. bonnie's focus is all on him, and he finds that there's something seductive to being under such intense scrutiny. the mark on his chest feels heavy, the physical burden of a heart something he's still trying to adapt to even after a few months of being real again.

'i see,' bonnie counters. perhaps he should have seen it coming, but it truly surprises him when the younger witch is suddenly in his arms, mouth pressed against his like warrior seeking conquest. her camera thuds heavily against his leg as she lowers it to the ground and kai moves to support her weight by cupping her thighs.

they haven't kissed all that often, the most prevalent one in recent memory being the liplock she took from him after her father's funeral. but that kiss had been tainted by her wrath and woe and need for comfort. this kiss is the kind that movies always play up, the physical manifestation of two soulmates coming together. kai practically expects a symphony to start to play in the background when bonnie starts to shove his jacket down his shoulders.

sucking her bottom lip between the teeth of his grin, he sinks to his knees and leans over her, pressing her back to the base of thick tree. they come apart long enough to remove his shirt and jacket, but kai can't resist the lust and thoughts of his name her mind teases his with. he pushes his way between her thighs. his hand slips down the front of her jeans, the denim and teeth of the zipper rough on the back of his hand as he rubs against her. she's opted out of wearing panties, the immediate contact with her bare lips causing kai to huff a small laugh.

she gasps in his mouth, her own hands coming up to grip his dark locks in a vice-like grip. the pull stings rather deliciously and kai relishes all the sensations bombarding him. the slick of her desire coating his fingers, bonnie's puffs of breath against his mouth, the ache of her hand tugging at his hair.

he enjoys being over her, being all around her, thickening the air she breathes and feeling how overwhelmed she is by his presence, how drunk on him she is. he simply enjoys being with her.

bonnie kicks her shoes off and kai eases up, helping her yank her jeans down supple, brown legs. he lays a trail of kisses up them both, flickering his tongue out over her bud when he reaches his destination. she's not interested in receiving head from him though, pushing him up and back as she sits up.

the younger presses another demanding on him before pulling away, spreading his jacket on the ground she kneels on when she turns her back to him.

fuck, fuck, she wants to kill him, kai thinks almost furiously, when her ass is presented to him and she's reaching back to tow him forward so that he's pressed against her. he tugs at the buckle of his belt, slipping his dick over the waistband of his black boxers. checking to make sure his jacket is at least padding her against any sharps on the ground, he leans over her back to adjust her grip on the tree before her. his dick teases her wet slit and bonnie arches back on him.

'kai,' she pleads. 'please, i want -'

he presses his shirt in her mouth and she clamps down on it like a good girl. he can't listen to her voice pleas for more when he can her thoughts for it in the echo chamber of his skull. settling back on his haunches, he grips her ass and squeezes before releasing her. she's slicked up by her want, but he wets his palm with a heavy lick anyway. kai transfers the spit to the tip of his dick before he's easing himself inside of her.

he has to stop.

she's tighter than he expected. the sudden extra wet of red and the flare up of pain that comes from her as well as the thoughts he's so tuned in to tell him more than what he thinks she wanted him to know.

'you're a virgin?' he queries. bonnie stops wiggling against him, freezing at being caught, before shaking her head furiously. she tries to push back on him, but he tightens his grip on her, halting the movement. he's upset, to put it mildly.

if he'd known, he would have made things better for her than a romp in the woods. he's not into the romantic shit, but bonnie gets stars in her eyes at the ideas of paris midnights and candlelit dinners and weddings between soulmates. if kai had known, he could've given her all the romance her little heart could want. fuck. he's stupid. it's their first time together period, he shouldn't have gotten so caught up in his lust that literally fucking her into the ground seemed like a good idea at all.

bonnie spits his shirt out. 'i'm not,' she tells him. at his glare, she defends herself. 'i'm not! you just took it.'

it doesn't make him feel any better and she must see that, because she eases herself back. kai is still inside her, but when he tries to correct that, she holds him against her. instead of fighting her, he just helps hold her steady as she reclines into him. tilting her head back on his shoulder, bonnie peers up at kai with green eyes that have always captivated him, back when he was little more than a spector and she was little more than an imp.

they must look strange, both half naked, pressed chest to back, with her looking up at him with soft eyes as he is upset about them having sex.

she smiles. 'i used to have a crush on you,' she shares. 'after you went away, and i decided to wait for my soulmate, a part of me used to hope it would be you.' one hand comes up to cup his face. her eyes are his weakness, weapons used to hold him captive.

'i would get so mad at myself, because of what you did and the circumstances. it seemed impossible'

she starts to undulate softly as she speaks, her eyes still on kai's. he catches the brief flicker of discomfort she feels, but she gives nothing away in her expression. that stays tender and loving and the emotions she feels reflect it. his heart pounds an unsteady beat behind the mark on his chest.

'and then you came back and it was you,' her hand grips his, slides it up under her tank top until he is palming at her her breast. she squeezes gently and when kai starts to mimic the motion, milking at the full globe, she hums in approval.

'i was elated. and scared. what do you do when your childhood dreams are fulfilled?'

caught up in her eyes, her soft voice as she relays her confession, kai doesn't notice when he begins to rock with her. but he notices the influx of pleasure that floods them both, the way her breathing escalates and her eyelids shutter.

'i don't care how we come together, kai,' she tells him. 'just that we do.'

and listening to her, kai is convinced as well. so come together they do.

* * *

'someday, i'm going to marry my soulmate,' kai mimics in a high-pitched voice. they've relocated back to the tent, snuggled down on their nest of padding, sleeping bags and blankets. kai's little witchling is draped naked across his chest, half-asleep when kai suddenly starts to tease her. bonnie bites playfully at his bare shoulder and he grips her tighter into his embrace in response. her body is warm and the curves of it fit snugly into his own pivots.

'just like my parents,' he coos and blinks exaggeratedly. 'it's _so_ romantic,' he sighs.

bonnie is sluggishly smacking him and chuckling at his antics, and kai indulges in the sound. his lips seek the top of her head. tracing the knobs of her spine with his fingertips. he licks his lips nervously.

'so how about it?'

'how about what?' she asks, sounding drowsy. it's dark now, the fire she'd ' _incendia'_ into being outside warms them through their open tent. the day's been long and hard on bonnie, kai made sure of it. but now he needs her to wake up and hear him. he needs her answer.

several possibilities flit through his mind, but the variability of them aren't a surprise. no matter how well kai attunes to her, bonnie bennett will always be unpredictable.

he shuffles slightly, and the girl on his chest grumbles in protest, but quiets down once he stills. in his hand is the box he'd placed in his pocket before their antics took over their day. removing the small circlet of gold, he seeks out her left hand and slides it onto her ring finger. the green opal glimmers up at him like a wink.

bonnie clutches at his chest sleepily, before reality seems to hit her. sitting up, she stares at her hand in disbelief. kai takes a moment to admire the bare beauty in his lap. tracing the dark curves and symmetry of her ( _their_ ) soulmark, kai gathers up his courage. the butterfly-shaped structure gives him reassurance that, at the very least, they were always meant for each other. he waits. her gaze flicks up to kai.

'how about,' kai asks bonnie, lacing his fingers through hers. 'marrying your soulmate?'

* * *

NOTE: It's a wrap.

Answering old questions: The ether is like a prison world, Kai is still physically a 22yo. Witches know about the ether, but not what it really is - compare it to death. You know you die, but you don't know what happens after that. About Jokai: they're odd. They have a twin connection amplified by being witches and their obsession/UST with each other. When I say they chose to be soulmates, I mean it - they tried to emulate that bond with their own magic on a birthmark they shared. But Jo's real sm is Ric and Kai's is Bon. So that ends up perverting their relationship even more bc, as shown w/ Kai and baby!Bon, you can't resist the draw your real sm has on you, even if you want to. They have the other half of your soul after all. You become magnetized, and that magnetization pulls Jokai apart even though they still have their own hooks in each other. And yes, I did put the weird incesty vibes in there on purpose. It's not sexual - Kai says he doesn't want her like that - but it's not platonic, for sure. And it goes both ways.

Just to preemptively answer a few questions that I think might come up: The flashbacks take place around late season 4 and current stuff is early season 5 in canon. There are things that are going on that I couldn't delve into because it's inconceivable that Kai would know what was going on - he's not part of the core group, he was completely cut off for a few years, and his main preoccupation is bonnie, not the antics of her friends so...yah. He only really cares when it affects him. You guys should know what's going on in canon, but Kai's clueless. Kai also doesn't give a shit about the merge or ruling the Gemini coven, really. In this fic, the merge had been about becoming one with Jo for him. Now that that option is off the table, he's cutting his losses and, like his sister, is choosing to start over. It's not outright stated, but Bonkai's soulmark is the image of sphenoid bone.


End file.
